The Countless Consequences of Winning
by patxaran
Summary: Yuugi Mutou just wants to be taken seriously as a game inventor, but (1) the only game anyone has time for is Magic & Wizards, and (2) the only thing anyone wants him to do is d-d-d-duel. Ryuuji Otogi tells him they can change this with Shadow Magic. Unfortunately, in order to create a new world, you have to destroy the old one.
1. Chapter 1

This fic was written for the YGO Mini Gift Exchange on AO3.

Turns out "mini" is not a concept I'm capable of understanding.

I will upload three chapters a day. There will be 48. If there are any reviews, I will respond to them in the final chapter.

* * *

Upon turning to leave his apartment on the way to work that morning, Yuugi Mutou noticed that the front door wasn't locked. It'd been left that way all night supposedly, and that was an alarming thought. With a heavy sigh, Yuugi turned and headed to the kitchen, trying to sound entirely normal whilst he removed the largest knife from the cutlery block on the counter. He then proceeded to creep around and check every concealed space in his apartment he imagined was large enough to hide a man.

"So, I'm going to be late," said Yuugi fifteen minutes later as he called his grandfather. "I, uh, forgot something at home."

"If you keep showing up late to work, I'm going to have to find someone else to cover the morning shift, Yuugi. I can't stock the storeroom myself anymore."

"But mornings are my best time, Grandpa. I won't have time to work on the game proposal I'm presenting to the heads of project development at Parchís Games next week if you schedule me for afternoons. I need the mornings."

"And I need someone here actually moving these boxes and organizing shipments before we open in forty-five minutes."

"I'll be there. I'll get everything put away."

"I can't even sweep with all these boxes."

"Just be patient, Grandpa. I'll be there in fifteen minutes."

Yuugi was there in thirty minutes, an actual inversion of the timetable he'd proposed. His grandpa didn't hesitate to point this fact out, but Yuugi took it with a good-natured smile as he haphazardly threw boxes onto storeroom shelves. His grandpa tutted as he turned away, saying such a bad job was going to do more harm than good in the long run, but Yuugi placated him with the typical, empty promises to sort the newly arrived items later when the morning rush died down.

The rush didn't ever die down. The whole city knew Kame Game, as well as the identity of the young man who tended the shop counter weekday mornings from half eight until noon. A line began even as Yuugi swung around the back of the shop, late to work as always. It was lucky no-one realized he no longer lived upstairs, as they were never looking for him when he arrived. Their eyes were directed firmly at the door and the façade, waiting to see the outline of Yuugi's distinctive hairstyle appear in the shadowy interior of the shop. Normally, it was just his grandfather's very similar hair they saw for the first half hour.

"Really? This entire shipment is Magic & Wizards cards?" asked Yuugi as he glanced under the flaps of a few of the opened boxes. "Is that all we ever sell anymore?"

"It's all anyone ever buys anymore," said Sugoroku. He took up his broom and began to sweep over the area where Yuugi had cleared the boxes.

"But there's…so much more to gaming than this," said Yuugi with a sigh of disappointment. "Don't you ever get tired of the fact that all anyone ever cares about is dueling around here?"

"This is my shop, Yuugi. I only care if they stop buying their games here and start patronizing your friend's shop. The clown one. The guy with a shop in every damn neighborhood of this entire damn city."

"Don't pretend you don't know perfectly well it's called Black Clown," said Yuugi. He laughed as he stacked the box he was holding in the back of the shop with its brethren. "And anyway, he hasn't built a shop in our neighborhood."

"He's just waiting for me to die. He knows it'll look bad to run me, Yuugi Mutou's poor grandpa, out of business. Although to tell you the truth, he very nearly already has."

"It's not personal, grandpa. He's a businessman. Plus, he's given you enough stock options to set you up for life in case business goes down. He's not trying to turn you out onto the street."

"Yeah, well, he can get the hell off my turf."

"He's not on your turf. He's made a very clear point not to touch your turf."

"He's everywhere else, though, isn't he? Ever since he got KaibaCorp behind him, he's got the whole city in his hands. This is the only neighborhood shop left, Yuugi. We're part of a dying institution. Literally. As I said, once I'm gone…."

Yuugi answered this with a noncommittal shrug, as there was literally no other suitable response to the tendency of elders of a certain age to talk about nothing but what shit the world would instantly become upon the advent of their deaths. Someone began knocking on the window impatiently, and Yuugi checked his watch to see that exactly one minute had passed from their scheduled opening time. He shook his head and went to unlock the door, smiling cheerily as he welcomed the first patrons in.

"Good morning! We have a tiny shop here, so let's all work together!" recited Yuugi as he ushered people through the door so they wouldn't stop too long to stare at him in befuddled amazement. He was after all, the King of Games in the flesh. "Form a line along the delineated pathways on the floor. The further browsing gallery will be open to five patrons at a time. Purchases should be made in a timely manner, as after fifteen minutes you will be asked to step out and make room for the next customer. Good morning! We have a tiny shop here, so let's all work together! Form a line…"

Once ten people had made their way into the shop, five in line while five others were free to browse, Yuugi resumed his station at the counter. A few cameras flashed, a small percentage of the pictures Yuugi knew were being taken of him as he went about restocking some displays within reach. Grandpa, ever-vigilante with his eyes as well as his broom, continued to sweep incessantly around the roving patrons at the front of the store. A bell rang at the cash register, and Yuugi hurried over from sorting packs of cards to take the first purchase (and first selfie) of the morning.


	2. Chapter 2

Yuugi Mutou had retired exactly three times from Magic & Wizards in the span of seven years. The first time he'd retired, it was because he'd wanted to move on to bigger and better things. More than anything, he'd wanted to create new games, games that would change and shape the world in much the same way games had changed and shaped Yuugi's own life. Yuugi was driven towards this aim like a vocation enjoined to him by the very cosmic powers of gaming themselves. To simply play would no longer be enough. Now, he must create. Now, he must beget the next great generation of great games.

There'd been one major hitch in Yuugi's game inventing career, however. All anyone in Domino City gave a single hoot about was Magic & Wizards, and the world at large agreed with them. No-one was over Magic & Wizards yet. Increasingly, it appeared as if no-one ever would be. It'd been a hurdle that even Yuugi's great fame as a duelist couldn't surpass. The people only wanted him to duel or to create things that heavily tied into Magic & Wizards. It was what they knew him for, and they insisted he must always be associated with it.

After a few years of mixed results and games that clearly only sold because his name was on them, Yuugi had become disillusion with inventing as an art. He'd gone back to dueling while suffering through a depressed stupor in which nothing mattered and he might as well play card games because that was all it seemed anyone really wanted. Indeed, the world had been overjoyed at his return to competition, which only furthered his self-alienating sense of purposelessness as it stifled and silenced the artist within him.

Anzu had re-entered Yuugi's life at this stage. She'd hit her own lull in achieving her dreams of becoming a famous dancer. Dancing at the level and in the places of the world she wished to preform was very much an image game. Success came with name-recognition and celebrity, and her name came tied to the greatest monster duelist in the world. Like Yuugi, she'd been caged in by the past, unable to untangle herself from her previous associations. In her case, the connections had been shoved in her face so long that she'd begun to idealize what Yuugi had been to her and had returned to Domino City to start the relationship with Yuugi that Yuugi had once always hoped for when they'd been friends in high school.

Anzu had supported Yuugi in his decision to retire a second time from Magic & Wizards so that they could spend more time together. The resulting backlash blaming her caused an irreparable rift to form between them. A few months later, Yuugi had once more unretired himself, but the relationship with Anzu hadn't survived. Anzu moved on and rarely spoke to Yuugi, because she'd needed to distance herself. Last he'd heard, she was dating some millionaire from Europe in hopes that by perhaps adding even more names to herself, she'd be able to lessen the long shadow that Yuugi and Magic & Wizards had cast over her life.

Yuugi had retired the third—and so far final time—in order to care for his sick grandfather. This the public hadn't judged him for this nearly as harshly as retiring over a girl, which definitely stung. It seemed understood that this wasn't a "real" retirement so much as it was merely a break. It was noble and beautiful, and the old man probably didn't have so very long to live if Yuugi was taking such a drastic measure.

Death was a fickle thing and a bit of a tease, though. With the elderly, one could never tell which in a cascading string of medical emergencies was going to the one to usher in an end to the good run they'd had of life. Yuugi had been a year living between his grandfather's home and his apartment, helping out every morning in the shop because Sugoroku could hardly stand anyone else lending him a hand. Jounouchi or his sister, Shizuka, took the afternoon shift, though it'd taken a bit of convincing to get Sugoroku to let them into the storeroom. Between the three of them, the shop kept running and even out-preformed itself. Grandpa had been elated with the sales boom, and in the end, that was all Yuugi had really wanted.

"You're my favorite duelist," whispered a small child barely tall enough to look over the counter of the shop. She hadn't said hello when her father had tried to coax her into it, but had merely stared dumbly up at Yuugi as he smiled and took the purchase she held out. The father laughed and pat his daughter on the shoulder.

"Tell him your favorite card."

"Magicians."

"Oh yeah?" asked Yuugi. "Which one is your favorite?"

"The…magicians."

Yuugi didn't hesitate a second. He agreed that the magicians were really cool and rang up the items while the father assured him quietly that the girl did in fact like all the magician cards, perhaps equally.

"Will you duel Friday?" asked the girl as Yuugi handed the purchase over to the father in a small paper bag.

"You mean Baraja City?" asked Yuugi. "Nope. I'm not dueling right now. I'm working here."

"You're my favorite duelist," the girl repeated, but this time with added urgency, as if such a statement were meant to cause Yuugi to reconsider. The father smiled apologetically to Yuugi above her and motioned that Yuugi didn't have to answer; children could be imprudent; it was okay.

"Well, while I've got some time off from dueling, I'm going to make lots of new, fun games for everyone," said Yuugi. "Don't worry. There might even be a few magicians in them."

"But I like dueling," said the girl. She didn't look happy, and Yuugi supposed he ought to have got used to that reaction by now. She left with her father shortly after, glancing back at Yuugi with a look of stern reproach over the fact he wasn't missing dueling enough or planning to get back to it absolutely immediately.

Yuugi sighed. He was disappointed that the girl was disappointed, but didn't have time to dwell on it. He turned his attention to the next customer in line and seemingly forgot about what had just transpired. After a year, it was surprisingly easy to allow such incidents to roll off of him. Indeed, these things happened nearly every day now. At this point, they were just a part of the routine of emptiness and meticulously ordered short-term goals that made up Yuugi's entire life.

Perhaps, Yuugi thought dully again and again as he hung back every day after his shift to help organize the shipments he'd fallen behind on, perhaps the world was right. Perhaps the majority wasn't so much speaking against him as it was speaking sense to him. Perhaps monster duels was his thing, his one thing, the thing he was meant to live and die in devotion to doing. No-one wanted Yuugi Mutou the game inventor. They wanted him to duel, to bring down the likes of Seto Kaiba, the billionaire asshole who dominated professional dueling arenas and, by proxy, the world.

Simply put, the people didn't want more games; they just wanted more of the same one game. It wasn't asking for a lot of Yuugi. In fact, dueling was infinitely less challenging to him than designing new games was. But, for whatever reason, playing didn't fulfill him anymore. It wasn't fun, and it wasn't exciting.

Playing was easy, though. Sometimes Yuugi wondered if easy was enough. When his life lost its direction and its center, becoming a mess of waning passion and eternal listlessness, he sometimes felt that perhaps having it easy was better than nothing.

Literally.

Because if Yuugi Mutou wasn't dueling, he was nothing.


	3. Chapter 3

There was always that moment of hesitation while getting dressed before an important meeting where Yuugi wondered if he'd be better off dressing in leather and chains or in a suit. The leather and chains look was absolutely unprofessional, but such accessories were a key component of the image that preceded Yuugi everywhere he went. They were what people expected to see him in, and caused them to connect all the good opinion they had of Yuugi Mutou the duelist with Yuugi Mutou the game inventor pitching his newest design. The suit, on the other hand, was clean, smart, and more in line with what a person wore when they were looking to be taken seriously. It didn't matter who you were; a suit was always appropriate.

Yuugi would be lying if he said he thought that his dueling attire inspired much respect in the middle-aged businesspeople that ran the product development departments of the world's biggest game companies. He went with a button up shirt and a tie to make it clear that he was serious. In a show of good will and a touch of personal flair, he kept a few pieces of chain jewelry layered in the most inconspicuous way one could wear chains. Which was; not very. But, at least they'd made the appearance everyone'd expected them to.

"So in short, the players collaborate to take down the demon king, but in the end only one player can be the good emperor, which is the highest and most powerful position in the game. During the game, any player can be the good emperor at any point, but if the emperor is destroyed, the game is lost. The title of emperor can be decided amongst the players working together and contributing resources to make the good emperor stronger, since only the good emperor can defeat the demon king. Or else, players can go for the personal win and vie for the position of the good emperor based on their stats. However, there needs to be some teamwork to bring down the demon king, or else no-one gets to be emperor, and they all lose."

There was a pause while the stern-faced members of the committee in costly casual sweaters and crossed legs leafed through the documents Yuugi had distributed among them. Yuugi fiddled anxiously with the pointed end of his tie as he waited for a response. They'd given him five minutes to outline the game, five fewer than he'd anticipated. He was pretty sure he hadn't been clear enough, but Jounouchi's suggestion that Yuugi dumb down his description had only resulted in Yuugi adding more words to it. All those words had become a mess. The committee had got too quiet. Their knit brows were too severe. They hadn't understood him. They barely understood why he was even here when his other games had had respectable runs and ought to have quelled his desire to make a name for himself in designs. Hadn't Yuugi proven his point yet? Didn't he have a duel or something to get to?

Finally, as though the group had come to the decision as a hive mind, consciousnesses intertwined wirelessly through the ether, a young, bearded man in the middle cleared his throat. He spoke for all of them.

"You said you had a simpler game."

"Yes. The second, smaller packet with the green line in the margin. Yes, that one. Well, then. Fundamentally, it's a classic racing game, like Goose or—"

"Like what?"

"It's one of those games where you roll dice and move forward on a track with an endpoint you must land on to win. Goose is a classic example."

"And what else is there?"

"Well, the theme is dragons trying to reach a fairy palace to celebrate a festi—"

"But you're Yuugi Mutou."

Yuugi winced like the recitation of his name, in the tone of voice in which this man had said it, were a rather abrupt reference to a condition of Yuugi's that Yuugi was ashamed of.

"Uh, yes, I am."

"Yuugi Mutou isn't necessarily synonymous with dragons."

"But this isn't related to Magic & Wizards."

"How about magicians? We have a lot more success with you and magicians. Our customers like your magicians."

"I've done plenty of magician games, already. I was thinking other motifs…."

"I don't think you've done so many. You haven't done a magician game in a long time."

"Actually, my last game was the one where you have to spell out the magician's spells, and based on the letter combinations and word length, the spell would be more powerful. There was a narrative, a track, and the spelling bit was a component used to overcome obstacles…but…in production all that was lost. It's essentially just scrabble with magicians on the box now."

"Ah, right! _The Magician's Spell_."

"Also, the title was misprinted as a possessive on the materials, when actually, I had intended it to be a play on words to be spelled more in the sense that the magicians _are spelling_ and not that they have—"

"Yes, well, it might've been too clever for the team that designed the accompanying materials. Sometimes things slip through the cracks in production."

"I was told no-one would get it when I pointed it out before the game was printed."

"It's just a silly joke. It works both ways, I think."

"But it worked better the other way."

The man frowned disapprovingly at Yuugi, and echoes of his expression spread like a wave through the rest of the committee. Yuugi hunched his shoulders obediently, realizing he was perhaps overstepping his bounds. He wasn't here to argue. He was here to persuade. Unfortunately, this got a lot harder when he was exasperated at the reminder that magicians were the only thing the name Yuugi Mutou could sell.

"We'll consider what you've brought us today. Mr. Mutou. We receive many proposals, but you can expect to hear from us within the next eight weeks. Perhaps with a few modifications, some of these ideas could work. We'll be in touch."

Yuugi nodded and stood to shake hands before leaving. On the way home he called Jounouchi to tell him of the failure, as Jounouchi was the only person he'd even told outside his own grandpa of the meeting today. Upon hearing the bad news, Jounouchi invited Yuugi to a drink. They both knew Yuugi didn't really drink, but Yuugi accepted, because sometimes Yuugi felt like it might just be the only thing left he could do.


	4. Chapter 4

Of all the people to run into smoking outside of a bar, Yuugi had to run into the only person who even half understood his struggle: Ryuuji Otogi. The young retail mogul and one-time game inventor was for once sans entourage as he leaned against the far wall along the narrow street with a cigarette held loosely between his curled lips. Yuugi had come out for air and quiet, only to find the air polluted by smoke and the quiet polluted with loud, half-drunk conversations between girls and the men chatting them up. He'd been on the verge of turning to leave and go home when Ryuuji called out to him.

"Yuugi? You look tired. Late night?" asked Ryuuji. He threw down the mostly spent cigarette and stomped it out before heading over to where Yuugi stood.

"I have work tomorrow, so, I was heading home."

"Cool. I can take you. I was also leaving," said Ryuuji. He directed Yuugi down a side street, and Yuugi followed, thanking him. "You live far? I'm about three addresses behind on your current residence, so you'll have to tell me where it is now."

"You drove yourself?"

"No. I came over with some friends, but I've already called a driver to bring me home. We'll drop you off first, though. It's that car at the end of the street with the lights on."

Yuugi and Ryuuji walk down the street together and climbed into the back of Ryuuji's chauffeured car. Ryuuji offered Yuugi a cigarette, but Yuugi reminded him that he didn't smoke. Ryuuji stated that in that case, he wouldn't either, and put the carton away.

"Are you celebrating something?" asked Ryuuji as he finished tucking the pack of cigarettes into the inside pocket of his jacket. "I don't see you out around town much. Today must be special if you went out when you have work in the morning."

"It's the opposite," Yuugi told him. He sighed wearily and looked out the window to the yellow lights flashing by in the street. "Unless you consider a perfect failure worth celebrating. I completely ruined a game proposal today. It was too convoluted. There weren't enough magicians."

Ryuuji chuckled. He offered a commiserating nod of understanding as Yuugi spoke, well familiar with a game inventor's plight in the current Magic & Wizard's dominated market. Even Ryuuji's own trademark dice game had incorporated a lot of the aesthetic and duel dynamic of Magic & Wizards. It wouldn't have sold otherwise. Customers demanded something new enough to be interesting while still remaining entrenched in what they'd already learned to play. Ryuuji hadn't exactly set out to shake the foundations of tabletop gaming in Domino City. He'd only needed something complicated enough to trip up Yuugi Mutou, and it'd failed anyway.

"That spelling game you did sold way better than the card game based on the Egyptian afterlife. I guess magicians beat out Egypt on the list of things people associate Yuugi Mutou with. The card game was better, though."

" _The Magicians Spell_ wasn't so bad before they cut all the cool parts."

"I know. I saw the original proposal. They called me in to review it."

"What? Since when were you publishing with Parchís Games?"

"Parchís Games is a subsidiary of KaibaCorp, and I'm on the game development board at KaibaCorp. Before you ask for all the exciting details, we…uh…don't do very much. We're like the most redundant department in the entire company. They give us the pitches and ask us how much like Magic & Wizards we can make it, or else they'll turn it down."

"And that's all you do?"

"When it comes to tabletop games, yes. It sucks."

He hadn't thought it was possible, but Yuugi now felt even worse. Ryuuji noticed his crestfallen expression and reached out to pat his shoulder in consolation. He didn't remove his hand when he was finished, but allowed it to linger. Yuugi looked over at this and caught Ryuuji's eye. Ryuuji leaned in to speak, lowering his voice to a whisper that was barely audible above sounds of the road.

"Look, I'm about as tired of this dueling mania as you are, Yuugi. I was raised to master every game imaginable in hopes of one day defeating you, so, let me tell you; this is bullshit. What are you doing tomorrow after work? I have an idea for how we can change this situation, but…" he cast a pointed glance over to the driver, "…it would be better to discuss it alone."

"I get off work at noon, but I normally don't leave until after two."

"Great. I'll come by at about half past."

"But I don't understand how you think we can change—"

"Don't worry. I'll tell you everything tomorrow."

"Okay. But you seem oddly secretive about it."

"This requires a lot of secrecy, Yuugi. You'll realize why once I tell you."

"It's not dangerous, is it?"

Ryuuji thought a moment. "Uh…no," he decided, but didn't seem totally sure.

"What are you planning Ryuuji?"

Ryuuji didn't answer. They'd reached the street outside Yuugi's apartment complex, and Ryuuji sat back in his seat. He already had a cigarette set in the corner of his mouth, and was wishing Yuugi a goodnight around it. Tomorrow, he promised, he'd explain everything. Then, the door opened and the driver motioned for Yuugi to make his way out of the car. Yuugi did so, but looked back uncertainly at Ryuuji one last time.

The flame of the lighter cast an oddly sinister aspect on Ryuuji's narrow face, which remained half concealed from the glow by shadows and wisps of long, disheveled black hair. He'd lost his bandana while dancing, had removed it and tied it around a strange girl's smooth neck like a scarf when she'd complained that his bites there were going to leave marks. She'd then drunkenly wandered off with it on and hadn't come back before Ryuuji'd left. He'd told Yuugi about it while they'd been walking to the car. Yuugi remembered it now. He also remembered he'd seen someone who might've been the same girl complaining outside the bathroom that the bandana she had on was too tight and she could hardly breathe or drink or even speak.

"Goodnight, Ryuuji," said Yuugi with what energy he could muster. "See you tomorrow, then."

"You, too," said Ryuuji as the light flickered out and all that was left in the back seat of the car was shadow and the burning end of the lit cigarette that barely illuminated Ryuuji's fingers. The door shut and the driver bowed once before making his way back to the front of the car. Yuugi turned and headed inside to his apartment, unsure of the cause of his sudden, strange sense of unease.


	5. Chapter 5

Ryuuji arrived fifteen minutes late from the time he'd proposed and with no good excuse as to why. Ryuuji was not one for excuses when the truth was that he'd simply lost track of how long it was going to take to reach Yuugi's apartment from the Black Clown headquarters. It wasn't a trip he normally made.

"So, how do you supposed we change the world?" asked Yuugi as he took a seat across the table from Ryuuji. Ryuuji had come bearing a packet of expensive, assorted cookies he knew Yuugi and his grandpa liked. Yuugi had opened the box and prepared tea to accompany them, as they were indeed his favorite, and he wanted to have a few right away before bringing the rest to the shop tomorrow morning.

"I don't intend to merely change the world," said Ryuuji as he uselessly stirred a tea he never added sugar or milk to. "I intend to destroy the world and remake it anew."

Yuugi was incredulous as he reached for a cookie. "Okay, sure, but like, how?"

"Shadow magic."

Yuugi dropped the cookie.

"Wait, what?" he asked in alarm. "Wait, so you mean like literally destroy the world?"

"Well, not entirely. Just enough to change the parts I don't like."

"…Are you serious?"

"Immensely."

" _Are you insane?_ "

"Uh…no."

"You sure?"

"Please, Yuugi, I know this is a lot to take in, but at least try to be serious."

"I was thinking to say the same to you," said Yuugi as he picked the cookie up off the table and placed it on the plate beside his tea. "Is this some kind of joke? Did Seto Kaiba send you here to mess with me? I didn't think he was getting that bored with me off the competition circuit. This is kind of weird even for him."

"Kaiba didn't send me."

"But how can what you're telling me possibly be real? You don't even know anything about shadow magic. _I don't even know anything about shadow magic._ That was always the other me. I never did any of that stuff."

"I know more than you think," said Ryuuji. "My father knew some. He learned a lot of it from your grandfather. He then went and learned even more because of the game he lost to your grandfather."

Yuugi looked Ryuuji in the eye and saw that Ryuuji wasn't joking. The twinkle of jest wasn't there. The sneer of a poorly concealed joke did not play in the shadows at the corners of his lips. His expression was firm. It was true; Ryuuji Otogi intended to destroy the world, or at least some part of it.

"What does this have to do with me?" demanded Yuugi. "What makes you think I'd agree to this? What you're saying is crazy. You're…"

…crazy. Yuugi couldn't finish the sentence. The image of Ryuuji's father came to his mind, the prematurely wizened face full of malice and singled-minded obsession with revenge on Sugoroku Mutou. That man had been crazy. He'd been crazy enough bend his own son's entire life to the sole purpose of avenging him for a curse he'd invited upon himself by challenging the game master Sugoroku for the Sennen Puzzle.

"…you're not seriously suggesting this."

These were empty words. Yuugi already knew. Ryuuji knew it, too.

"I need help."

"Yeah, you do."

"No, I mean I need assistance. Don't be an ass. I can't do this alone."

"Find a way or just, like, don't do it at all. I'm not messing with shadow magic, or whatever it is you think you know."

"I only want to make Magic & Wizards less popular. It'll take an act of God to do that, though. Or of black magic. I thought you'd agree that the game has had its allotted run and ought to be replaced with something else. People need much more than just Magic & Wizards."

"Not like this," said Yuugi, shaking his head. "Not like how you're suggesting."

Ryuuji tried to think up a new argument that might convince Yuugi. The only sound was the clink of metal against ceramic as Yuugi remembered to stir his tea. He took a sip, not sure what else to do. How much time was supposed to pass before he was permitted to change the subject?

"Yuugi, something needs to change. We don't have the clout to challenge KaibaCorp, and we both know it's KaibaCorp that's keeping Magic & Wizards on top."

"But you work for KaibaCorp."

"So do you. We all do. Think about that. Games are just the tip of the iceberg. KaibaCorp has a hand in everything that keeps the world running. They've diversified into agriculture, energy, communications, arms. They own key members of the government and have their own private paramilitary force. Seto Kaiba is well on his way to becoming king of the fucking planet, okay? He needs to be stopped."

"Are we supposed to take down KaibaCorp, or are we supposed to stop Magic & Wizards? Which is it?"

"They're one and the same at this point. Taking down one will damage the other. Magic & Wizards is just the easier target. KaibaCorp's too big."

"If it's as big as you say, it sounds too big to fail. The company will probably survive without Magic & Wizards."

"Seto Kaiba won't. Without Magic and Wizard's, Seto Kaiba's nothing. There's too much of him in the game. It's not safe to have someone like that wielding so much power. He needs to get a life, but he never will, because the company just lets him perpetuate his niche interests and impose them on the world. We need more than the world Seto Kaiba has given us. The world needs to move on from this one game."

"I'm sure in a few more years interest will wane…."

"Not if Seto Kaiba has a say. And believe me, Seto Kaiba gets a pretty big say."

Yuugi swallowed nervously and watched his cold fingers working as he reached out and began breaking the cookie next to his tea into halves, then quarters, then eighths. He couldn't get it down any smaller than that unless he crushed it to crumbs. Ryuuji, meanwhile, sipped noiselessly at his tea. He allowed Yuugi a moment to process the proposal and destroy the cookie that hadn't merited such abuse except for the crime of being within Yuugi's trembling reach.

"No," said Yuugi at last. "I won't help you. For one, shadow magic is dangerous. Only those within the Sennen Items could master it. For two, there's room in the world for Magic & Wizards and other games, together. I don't blame Magic & Wizards for the fact that people love that game. It's a good game. Maybe you're right that KaibaCorp's keeping it at the forefront at the expense of other games gaining any sort of traction, but it's what the people want. Eventually they'll want something else. Nothing's eternal."

"People want what they're told they want. It's called advertizing."

"No. It'll pass. It'll have its moment, and then it'll pass."

Ryuuji sighed and let his shoulders fall. He inclined over the table, but it wasn't to speak in confidence. He plucked three cookies from the tray, slotting them between the fingers of his left hand, and stood.

"I'll let you consider what I've said. We have plenty of time. Things won't get worse then they are. And they won't get any better unless we do something. I'm patient, though. I can wait."

"Don't bother waiting. I've already said no."

"For now."

Ryuuji turned to leave the apartment, eating a fourth cookie as he went. He wished Yuugi a good rest of his day and hoped his grandpa was well. He marveled a moment at the irony that he was wishing the good health of Sugoroku Mutou, the man he'd been raised to wish nothing but curses upon. It was funny how people changed. He laughed. Then, he left.

Yuugi took another cookie and dunked it thoughtfully into his tea as he considered whether or not the conversation he'd just had was something he needed to tell anyone about. Ryuuji Otogi was famous for being a bit eccentric, bordering on paranoid. He hadn't had the most orthodox childhood. Sometimes his perception of the world didn't exactly sync-up with that of his peers. What news would this be, then, to anyone they both knew? What would Yuugi get except commiseration, a shrug, and the agreement that yes, Ryuuji was indeed a bit odd?

In a way, though, Yuugi supposed he understood. In a world dominated by Magic & Wizards [and KaibaCorp], he supposed you had to be crazy to see any way out. You had to be a little crazy to even imagine a world without those things. Plainly put, Ryuuji Otogi was crazy. But, what else was new?


	6. Chapter 6

"You know, it doesn't take nearly so long to organize the storeroom once you're totally over the fact that you're just organizing Magic & Wizards cards," said Jounouchi between yawns. Shizuka was at the counter, so, he and Yuugi had taken time together to sort out the mess in the back of the shop.

"Isn't there some merchandise with your face on it that we could sell?" asked Jounouchi as he held up a packet of cards that had Yuugi's face on it due to the promotional gimmick of "magic" that was behind the campaign. "This shop is basically a tourist trap at this point, so you might as well milk it. Put some of your cool dueling poses on mugs and shit and jack up the price."

"My dueling persona is licensed," said Yuugi sadly, shaking his head. "I can't just put it on whatever I want."

"What the hell? But it's your face. And your clothes."

"But it's also a part of the promotional material used by KaibaCorp in—"

"Fucking Kaiba," spat Jounouchi as he tossed the unopened packet of cards back into the box of identical packets on the shelf. "Copyrighting people's faces behind their backs."

"He hasn't copyrighted my face. You can't own a person's face. He has a license to use my dueling image, which his company half built up itself, and is very narrowly defined…."

"Well, then just put your normal face on buttons and shit and sell that."

"I would have to make it very clear that my dueling persona is in no way affiliated…."

"How hard can that be? Like 'hey, I'm Yuugi Mutou smiling in a selfie that I printed on a tee-shirt; buy it' and there you go. Easy."

"You should talk to grandpa. He's been trying to get me to sell autographed cards and stuff forever, especially since I put up the sign for no autographs when my hand cramped up, and I couldn't write or eat properly for three whole days."

"That's why we have a no autograph policy in this shop? I kinda thought you were just being a spoilsport because you were so tired of people only taking you seriously about your dueling."

"Nope. They were just wasting a lot of time. A lot of people asked for autographs but didn't have anything for me to sign, so we'd waste a lot of time figuring out what I could put my name on. A lot of the time they wanted me to sign something they'd bought, but like, a lot of the stuff in this shop is laminated and really hard to get a signature to stick to. I started signing people's receipts instead, but then, my hand cramped up after a week of that."

"Oh yeah, Shizuka was telling me some receipt you signed sold for hundreds of dollars online. You created a collector's item."

"I know. KaibaCorp's duelist tracking department contacted me to see if I would be releasing any other receipt signatures. They assumed it was a marketing move I'd made to drum up publicity while not competing."

"Uh…duelist tracking?"

"Yeah. They have these assessors who calculate how much you're worth as a commodity. Like, if you're ever curious who decides how much a celebrity's signature is worth at auction, it's them. They come up with a value for everything."

"So if you took a shit, put it in a bag, and then signed the bag, they'd be able to figure out how much that signed shit was worth?"

"Assuming they don't already know."

Jounouchi laughed at the idea of selling literal shit to fans and tried to guess the price it would go for as he and Yuugi continued to remove long boxes stacked like bricks from the even larger boxes that'd been shipped in. It'd been pretty easy so far to match all the packs of cards up by color...until the yellow had begun to outnumber all the rest. They'd then had to shift everything over to make room, which wasted a significant amount of time. When Sugoroku checked in on the tow of them later, he tsked and said that the kids should've tallied the types of packs up first before storing them onto the shelves. That was what Sugoroku had taught them, wasn't it? What a shame….

"Should your grandpa be walking around so much, Yuugi?" asked Jounouchi after Sugoroku returned to the sales floor of the shop. "Didn't he have a stroke or something? He tries to lift boxes and stuff when you aren't here, you know. I had to take the step ladder home last week."

"You took the ladder? He told me some ruffian stole it."

"I had to. I kept catching him climbing it for no literally reason. I can reach the top shelves without the ladder. He had no excuse to be using it while I was here. I don't know if it was intentional, or if he just forgot, or what."

"He probably forgot. He forgets a lot now."

"Yeah, well, he'll get himself killed on that thing, so, I spoke to Shizuka, and we took it home with us."

"Thanks. You're right. It's better he doesn't have it around."

Yuugi listened to the dry sweeping sounds of the broom scraping along the edge of the counter just outside on the sales floor. In a few minutes, the broom reached the storeroom door, and Yuugi watched the bristles poke out from beneath the door as they brushed past with a heavy and determined sweep.

"Why does he sweep so much?" asked Yuugi thoughtfully as he considered the sound. He looked at Jounouchi, who shrugged. If Yuugi didn't know the answer, how was Jounouchi supposed to know? The old man was Yuugi's grandpa.

"Maybe that's all he good for?" said Jounouchi rather tactlessly as the broom bumped the door again. "The three of us kinda do everything else around here. Pretty sure he's also keeping a no-so-subtle eye out for shoplifters."

"Do you remember that website with pictures of him sweeping and lots of really stupid puns like 'Mutou mania _sweeping_ the nation'?" asked Yuugi. He began to recite more: " 'Sugoroku Mutou calls for _sweeping_ reforms of game retail industry', 'Kame Game, _sweeping_ customers off their feet since 1985', 'did you hear about the recent remodel of the Kame Game shop—'"

" '…I heard they _made a clean sweep_ of the place.' Yeah, I know that one."

"There's a gif of him sweeping over a perfect game of minesweeper, and like, I guess because mine _sweeper_ , but like, it's a stretch."

"Or where they edited him onto the cover of that Sleeper Cell game, and the title was ' _Sweeper_ Cell'."

"Or where he loses a poker game to me, and I'm apparently like 'read 'em and _sweep_ , old man!' And that's why he's always sweeping."

" 'Don't _sweep_ for me, Argentina.' "

"Come to Kame Game and get _swept_ _up_ in the excitement."

"With a fine broom like that, who wouldn't _sweep_ around?"

…

…

…This went on for far too long, cumulating in Jounouchi whipping out his phone to look up even more terrible puns online. When Shizuka later stuck her head in the room to ask for a refresher case of the Kaiba Kollection packets, she was met with the sight of Yuugi and Jounouchi sniggering in the illumination of Jounouchi's phone as they traversed the online world of punny memes instead of actually working.

"Your grandpa's right, Yuugi, you guys are useless," said Shizuka. Jounouchi just grinned wider and went to take an unopened case down from the shelf for her. He tore halfway along the perforated opening that covered the top of the box longways before he handed it over. He knew he had to get it started because she didn't like to open the boxes this way herself. The first part of the perforation was detailed and easy to ruin. It was supposed to give the case a decorative backboard so it could be placed directly on the shelf. Shizuka handed Jounouchi the battered, spent case from outside and then went back out to the shop. Jounouchi tossed this box lazily into a corner, unable to just throw it away because Yuugi reminded him they'd have to break it down first or it would waste space in the trash bin.

"How long are you going to hang around here today, anyway?" asked Jounouchi. "You've been here almost all day. Don't you have games to work on?"

"I don't know," said Yuugi, unable to conceal the unhappiness that crept across his face and down to a sudden weight in his fingers. Tiredly, he leant against the wall just behind him. "Maybe I ought to go back to dueling."

"Don't make yourself duel if you don't like it."

"It's not that I don't like dueling. It's fun. I just wish it wasn't, like, the only thing I could do. If I could work on new games _and_ duel, that would be perfectly acceptable. I've even tried that. No-one cares about my games. It feels like they don't care about me."

"The world loves you, Yuugi. You're almost everyone's favorite duelist."

"Almost?"

"Seto Kaiba's favorite duelist is Seto Kaiba. You're probably his favorite opponent, though."

"Ryuuji Otogi was telling me that Seto Kaiba controls the world and sabotages any game that isn't Magic & Wizards. He kind of implied that my failure was KaibaCorp's fault. KaibaCorp wants me to duel, so, I have to duel."

"Ryuuji's kinda paranoid, but that's not half wrong."

"Sure. And there's probably some executive order to humor me but not let me get too successful with my own games."

"You _are_ Seto Kaiba's favorite opponent. He probably gets pissed every time you retire. It's lonely at the top, especially for such a huge dick like Kaiba."

"Ryuuji wants to take down KaibaCorp. He thinks he knows a way to do it."

"Yeah, well, Ryuuji's good at making connections and drawing conclusions and stuff, but he's not so great at using that information in a way that isn't totally insane. He's harmless, though. I believe the word for what he is is 'eccentric'. That's what they call him on tv. It's a nice way of saying he's out of his fucking mind, but not in the way that he might murder you in your sleep."

"I know what eccentric means, Jounouchi. But what if he actually does know something? He said his father knew shadow magic. His father and my grandpa weren't exactly ignorant to the paranormal aspect of the Sennen Items, when you think about it. Really, they seemed to have been rather too casual about the whole thing."

"Don't you think if Ryuuji Otogi could do shadow magic he'd have used it already? What the hell would be holding him back?"

"He said he needed my help."

"Wait, you mean Ryuuji Otogi is going around asking you to help him bring down KaibaCorp?"

"Uh, yeah. I turned him down."

"Well, clearly he asked the wrong guy. Should've come to me. I'd have been more than fucking happy—"

"He said he wants to get rid of Magic & Wizards."

"Oh, well, in that case, nevermind."

"Seriously, Jounouchi?"

"Hey, I like the game. It's been a huge part of my life, and I'm not ready to let it go."

"Don't you like any other game?"

"In what way?"

"Is there any other game you enjoy playing that isn't just Magic & Wizards?"

"Yeah. I like lots of games."

"Is there any game you'd play instead of Magic & Wizards?"

"Honestly…no. Not if Magic & Wizards were an option. I'll always choose Magic & Wizards over anything else."

"Do…do you even like any of the games I've written?"

"Well…uh…."

"Do you even _remember_ any of the games I've written?"

"There was the one with the magicians and the letters…."

"And?"

"And like…."

"Like what?"

"Fuck it, Yuugi, there's a lot of games in the world."

"But only five of those games are mine, Jounouchi."

"But you can't just ask me out of nowhere without giving me time to consider and look over and decide—"

"Decide which one you can pretend to give a crap about?"

"Fucking hell, Yuugi, you can't just—"

"I'm leaving," said Yuugi. He pushed himself off the wall with violent energy and snatched up his coat from where it lay draped over the back of a chair. "I need to go for a walk and think about stuff. Don't follow me. You're still on the clock. You should finish sorting out all the shit back here. It's a mess."

"Yuugi, really, don't be so—"

"See you later. Bye."

The back door to the shop slammed shut in Jounouchi's face as he hurried across the storeroom too late to successfully grab Yuugi by the shoulder and arrest his hasty departure. In some unseen corner behind him, a partly opened box flopped over and spilled a large quantity of slithering, plastic foil enrobed booster packs across the floor. Jounouchi swore at it and went to tidy up the mess. He couldn't give Yuugi anything but time right now. He knew that. He had to respect that sometimes the guy just needed to be left alone.

Really, all the greatest duelists were finicky and temperamental like that. They weren't average people. That was what made them such virtuosos in the game of monsters and cards. Jounouchi understood that Yuugi, his best friend and the brightest dueling star of their generation, just got into moods sometimes. You had to forgive him. Yuugi always snapped out of it eventually. Jounouchi would call him later, and Yuugi would apologize. Yuugi would say he was stressed, that maybe he just missed dueling or something, that there was a lot on his plate right now. Jounouchi would agree and remind him he still had his friends to help him out. Jounouchi could even help Yuugi train for when he got back into dueling later. Yuugi didn't have to worry about getting rusty in his off time, if that were even possible for a duelist of Yuugi's eerily innate caliber.

Yuugi would always sigh at least once after Jounouchi had finished reciting his typical, unending support speech. He'd forcefully cheer up afterwards and accept Jounouchi's offer. He'd then never follow up on it. Jounouchi never pressed the matter. Somehow, without Yuugi saying anything, Jounouchi knew he wasn't meant to.


	7. Chapter 7

Sugoroku Mutou died one month short of two full years into Yuugi's latest retirement. The normal thing happened, nothing dramatic. Sugoroku wasn't feeling great, his eyes had gone a bit yellow, and Yuugi had taken him to the doctor to hear several tests and long hours later that there was nothing much that could be done for the old man's liver. Hospice would take over, and they'd try to ensure Sugoroku passed in peace and as painlessly as possible.

Peace and painless meant the doctors essentially knocked Sugoroku out with medicine until he stopped living. Yuugi didn't protest or comment. This wasn't the first time he'd heard bad news about the old man's health. It took a moment for it to wash over him that this was going to be the last bad news he'd ever hear. He stoically kept his game face on throughout, the face that gave nothing away.

Alone, sitting for even longer hours at the bedside waiting for the old man to die, he let his mind wander closer to the reality of what was happening. He wondered if being unconscious truly meant you were out of pain, or if it just looked that way from the outside, because, except in highly specialized situations involving ancient spirits and cursed items, there was no way to get into another person's head and make sure. Was it really peaceful to feel uncommonly unwell one morning, go through a litany of medical tests, and then fall asleep in a strange hospital room to never wake up? When people said they wanted to die peacefully, perhaps go out softly in their sleep, was that honestly what they'd meant? No-one ever precisely specified _where_ they hoped to fall asleep before they shuffled off that mortal coil. Yuugi had heard that hypothermia apparently felt like falling asleep, too. He doubted many people hoped to die of hypothermia.

The last time Yuugi and Sugoroku had ever spoken at length, the old man had made sure to tell Yuugi what ought to happen if he died. This had been nothing new. Every time they'd gone to the hospital, even for a routine check-up, Sugoroku had bombarded Yuugi with his newest list of demands for what should "transpire should he expire" or something else morbidly humorous, because Sugoroku apparently thought his slow decline to death merited jest. Yuugi had stop complaining about it. He supposed everyone had to deal in their own personal way, even if it hurt his feelings that Sugoroku couldn't be just a bit more serious.

Yuugi should've known something was up when his wish for sincerity was suddenly granted. After a spasm of pain he'd been up with all night and hadn't called Yuugi about once, Sugoroku had stopped smiling and trying to make jokes. Instead, as they were parked in the lot of the hospital and no longer moving, he'd grabbed Yuugi by the arm. He'd told him, plainly and earnestly, as though it were the last thing he'd ever get to say, that on the event of death, he wanted to buried with the two taped-together halves of his beloved Blue Eyes White Dragon card and Yuugi's last remaining pieces of Exodia. They were in a safe in Sugoroku's bedroom, but the combination wasn't important, because the safe was never locked. Because Sugoroku looked at these cards every night before he went to sleep. Because they were the most important things in the world to him.

Yuugi had been silently mortified to discover that his grandpa's legitimate dying wish was to be buried with Magic & Wizards cards. The cards were on the small table beside him now. He'd called Jounouchi to bring them to the hospital, and Sugoroku had held them and looked at them lovingly as he'd drifted into an artificial sleep. Yuugi had only now removed them from the old, wrinkled hands. He'd been afraid that if he'd taken them earlier, the old man might've immediately died at that moment, sensing they were gone. Yuugi had even pointlessly whispered that the cards were only on the table, that he was moving them so they wouldn't be dropped on the floor, and that they'd be waiting right here for when Sugoroku woke up.

Sugoroku didn't wake up. Jounouchi arrived in time to see him go, though there wasn't much to see. The soul that left the room the instant Sugoroku passed on hadn't really been there in much of a present capacity anyway. The deepened silence knew he was gone well before either Jounouchi or Yuugi had made the connection.


	8. Chapter 8

People who cared about Yuugi made an effort to care about Sugoroku Mutou dying, but the outpouring of public feeling felt fake in the way it was condensed to a level Yuugi could participate with it. There were articles, not just online but in actual, physical papers. There were questions asked of him on the phone, statements people were wondering whether or not he'd make. They wanted to know how he was pulling through. He had the sinking suspicion that they were hoping the answer was "not well".

Actually, boring as it was for the press, Yuugi was fairly at terms with what had happened. He'd been as prepared as anyone could be. There'd been no tragic accident, nothing that no-one hadn't deserved, no bitter feelings that'd never been worked out. A sick old man had finally died. His life had been long and full of adventure. If Yuugi had room to regret anything, it was that mortal human beings couldn't live forever. But, that was a general regret on the transitory nature of human existence and not particular to only him.

The funeral had been big. Too damn big, but Yuugi had been reminded by Anzu of all the people Sugoroku had known. Something quick and private wouldn't have been fair to anyone who'd wanted to pay their respects. Also, it was going to be impossible to exclude the press entirely. They'd been staking out all the funeral homes and cemeteries and crematoriums ever since they'd found out Sugoroku Mutou was in the hospital and that his condition was grave. Instead of having a small, close affair ruined by their presence, it was better to give in and go all out. At least in that case, the press could be somewhat corralled and controlled because their presence would be taken into account when planning.

KaibaCorp had lent hands to help control the crowd of onlookers that hovered at the fringes of the funeral. Countless people craned their necks and tried to spy a view of…what? Yuugi Mutou looking sad? Yuugi maintained his game face with unceasing vigilance. He nearly finished the entire funeral without incident. Nearly, that was, until a stranger burst from behind a turn in the path as Yuugi made his way ahead of his friends to the parking lot and a waiting car.

"When are you gonna get back to dueling?" demanded the stranger. He was a child really. He seemed to be in his teens judging by his school uniform and his all-knowing attitude.

"Sorry, but what the hell?" asked Yuugi, startled away from politeness. He'd just passed a highly emotional few days while expressing the least amount of emotion possible. Clearly, he was not going to be found in his best mood.

"C'mon, you just retired because that old man was gonna die, everyone knows that. How long 'til you duel again?"

"Uh…I'm not going to duel again. I mean, except maybe for charity or just for fun, but—"

"I get that you have to go through a mourning period, but I need to know when you're planning to duel again because I wanna be the first person to challenge you to a duel. I have a lot to prove, but a very tight schedule with exams coming up. I'd like to know a rough estimate so I can make sure I have time to prepare."

"What?" asked Yuugi, finally halting. He'd been trying to duck around the stranger, only half listening to what the person was even saying. Now, he was forced to stop and stare, completely dumbfounded.

"You realize this is a funeral, right? I have to go to a lunch now. You're making me late, and people notice when I'm late."

"I traveled all the way to Domino City to challenge you to a duel. It was a very expensive flight, and as I'm pretty sure you won't be at Kame Game anymore…."

"Do your parents even know you're here?"

"I ran away from an orphanage. Dueling you is the driving force of my entire life. Ever since the tragic duel five years ago that took my parents from me, I've sworn vengeance on the entire establishment of Monsters & Wizards—"

There was hollow, plastic click of some projectile being released and propelled forward. A second later, the mysterious teen with the tragic vendetta was on the ground, rolling and crying out as he was neuromuscularly incapacitated by a surge of electric current. Yuugi leapt back in alarm as security officers rushed forward to capture, bind, and escort the stranger away.

Ruffled, Yuugi, continued onwards to the parking lot. Jounouchi and Honda caught up with him. They'd come running the moment they'd realized Yuugi was being confronted. The security had beat them to it, appearing as if magically transported to the spot that same instant.

"The fuck was that? Some fucking security we've got, letting weirdos get so fucking close to you," said Jounouchi, looking around the trees and path, as though hoping to spy a security agent and chastise them personally on Yuugi's behalf.

"It was just a kid," said Yuugi. "He wanted to challenge me to a duel for some reason."

"What an idiot," said Honda. He placed a reassuring arm around Yuugi's shoulders. "Don't let it get to you. It's not your problem."

"He seemed to think it was my problem," said Yuugi with an uncertain glance back in the direction the teen had been carted off in.

"Like I said, a fucking weirdo. Can't even respect a fucking funeral," said Jounouchi. He opened the car door before the driver could come around, ushering Yuugi into the backseat where Jounouchi and Honda joined him. "Let's get some fucking lunch. I'm starving."


	9. Chapter 9

Ryuuji Otogi hadn't come to the funeral of Sugoroku Mutou. He hadn't been able to express well why he couldn't attend, but Yuugi had accepted it as one of those things people could never adequately put into words. It wasn't a gesture intended to spite Yuugi or disrespect the memory of his grandpa. It was something much deeper, originating in the faintly echoing remnant of the lifelong conditioning Ryuuji had undergone to avenge the curse his father had suffered after gambling and loosing against the world's greatest gambler. A long unfinished chapter of Ryuuji's life had ended when Sugoroku died. As thoroughly as Ryuuji had abandoned that chapter, only Sugoroku's death could've ended it for him.

Ryuuji did show up a week later to offer condolences in person. He, almost as much as Yuugi, had needed to come to terms first with a world in which Sugoroku Mutou no longer breathed. He'd come bearing a few sprigs of chrysanthemum, showing Yuugi a picture of the larger bouquet in a tall, ceramic vase that the sprigs had come from and that Ryuuji had ordered placed among the heaps of other flowers and momentos that littered the place where Sugoriku was buried. He said, as he flicked through the camera roll of his phone, that he figured the caretakers needed to clear the spot every two days just to keep all the donations to Sugoroku's memory from overtaking the entire cemetery. That's why he'd had a photo taken of the vase. It might not be there by the time Yuugi got around to visiting. Someone was probably going to take it home with them. It was a very nice vase. It didn't look too much like it'd come from a cemetery at all, really.

After showing off his contribution to the "pile of empty sympathy" he called the mass of items at the gravesite, Ryuuji invited himself to make Yuugi some tea. He'd considered bringing cookies, but he figured Yuugi would have more than enough food around. And anyway, someone had likely beaten Ryuuji to it, as he was a week late. Yuugi's favorite brand of cookies wasn't exactly a secret amongst those who knew him. There were probably already five packets. He opened the pantry door and discovered there were actually twelve.

After talking forever to himself with limited input from Yuugi, Ryuuji finally grew quiet to make the tea. Yuugi accept the cup with a polite thanks and blew on it silently while Ryuuji took a seat across the table. Ryuuji had brought over an opened packet of the cookies from the pantry and began to eat a few.

Yuugi sighed softly as the warmth of the liquid filtered down through him, warming his otherwise frozen insides. He took a cookie as well, but didn't know if he planned to eat it or not.

"Do you know," began Yuugi in a small voice after being revived by the tea, "how much paperwork needs to be done before you can bury someone with Magic & Wizards cards? Even when a set of those cards is incomplete, and one is physically ruined?"

"I've never thought about," admitted Ryuuji. "But I guess with such rare cards, even if they're damaged, removing them from circulation in order to inter them alongside their owner might cause a bit of a legal jumble."

"I wonder if there's a stipulation is Seto Kaiba's will that he must be buried with his three Blue Eyes White Dragons."

"That would be a mess. Those cards are still valid, usable cards. You'd be removing them from the entire game. You can't just cancel a card out; they're still considered usable as long as they aren't totally destroyed. Plus, Seto Kaiba strikes me as the kind of person who's going to have himself preserved under glass in a vault, and then build a huge complex around himself so people can pay their respects. A few hundred years later, people will show up and raid the place. Probably for the monster cards. Because Magic & Wizards will still be everything."

"Kaiba always was obsessed with the pharaoh. Might as well have a raidable tomb of his own. Probably makes him feel more like he died the king of something."

Ryuuji laughed and raised his cup in a sarcastic toast to the truth of what Yuugi had just said.

"It still kind of amazes me, you know, after all the places he traveled, the adventures he had, all the different games he mastered, that my grandpa still wanted to be buried with cards."

"Old people have one-track minds. It's the thought process narrowing and shutting down because they realize there's no more future for them. My father was like that before he died. They know it's over."

"Your father was like in his forties when he died, though."

"Mathematically. He acted plenty like he'd reached his nineties, though, especially when his mind started going. You know how old people forget a lot of their life as they get up in age? Well, he hadn't even lived all that long, so when he started to forget, it actually got a lot easier to deal with him. He didn't forget he hated Sugoroku, of course, but he also stopped always listing all the things he'd missed out on because he'd aged fifty years in an instant."

"I still can't believe my grandpa did that to someone."

"It was a mutual risk they both took. Your grandfather bet fifty years, too. He just had supernatural luck on his side. My father knew that and challenged him anyway. My father was a fool. I hope I've taken after my mother when it comes to brains. Some people say you get intelligence from your mother, and I kind of hope that's true."

Yuugi offered a distracted nod. His eyes wandered across the room to the long sideboard replete with flowers and family photos. Anzu had arrayed all the things there while she'd been in town. She, not Yuugi, had selected and framed the photos so they'd be presentable, and she, not Yuugi, had deposited the first offering alongside them. Jounouchi and Shizuka always brought more from the shop where people left their cards and gifts for Yuugi under the assumption that Yuugi lived upstairs.

"There's so much junk here," said Yuugi dully. Ryuuji looked behind him to the sideboard and nodded.

"Huge turn-out."

"It gives me a headache. You don't really realize how strong flowers smell until you've got this many of them shut in such a small space."

"Open a window."

"Last time there was a breeze, and it knocked a lot of stuff over."

"Then throw them away. They aren't doing anyone any good. They'll be dead in a week, maybe less, seeing how you don't seem to plan to take care of them."

"They're such a waste of money. Flowers are stupidly expensive."

"You should've asked for chartable donations in lieu of flowers."

"I should've."

Ryuuji stood and went to survey the sideboard with his hands clasped thoughtfully behind his back. He smiled at a few photos, toyed with a few trinkets, and occasionally reached out to flick a drooping alstroemeria and watched it flutter apart over everything that had been in its shadow. He looked over with feigned guilt each time, and Yuugi laughed, which only encouraged him further.

One photo in particular caught Ryuuji's eye, and he plucked it up from the sideboard to bring it over. He held it out to Yuugi, asking if Yuugi knew what it was. Yuugi studied it and said he didn't know. There were five people in the photo, and he only recognized his grandpa and his dad.

"The stupidly good-looking man pretending to brush his hair out of his face so casually is my father. He always looked much smarter than he was just because he looked like a dashing, sexy antagonist from a film. He was very good at appearing to know everything. Even he fell for it. Because how can someone with that jawline be wrong? He was annoyed I didn't take after him enough."

"Hardly at all, honestly," muttered Yuugi, now looking between the photo and the man standing in front of him, trying to see the similarities. "I've seen this guy in a few photos, but I never made the connection. Even when I met him, I never realized…."

"He didn't age gracefully."

"That's putting it lightly. But he got so short?"

"Shadow magic doesn't play fair. I guess taking fifty years wasn't enough. It had to fuck him up, too."

"You must've hated my grandpa."

"I most certainly did."

"Do you still hate him? I'm not going get mad if you do. I get it. I don't take that personally."

"There's no use in hating someone who's dead."

"That's a yes, then."

"Ha. Ha. Ha. No, it isn't. It's more complicated than what you're asking."

"You were always so kind to him. Sometimes I wondered if you were compensating for how much you still blamed and hated him, even though you were my friend."

Ryuuji took the photo from Yuugi, looking over it once more with mild distaste. He placed it on the table between them, face-down, and took his seat again. The tea was lukewarm and bitter. He'd forgot to remove the bag. He did so now, several minutes too late, and drank the tea anyway. His throat had gone dry, and the astringency wasn't particularly helpful, but he needed something to wet his lips before he spoke:

"You know when you're in love with someone and it happens that when your mind wanders, it often just repeats that person's name first thing, before any other thought? Like, you're microwaving a burrito or something and the warning beep goes off to turn it over, but you're busy, so you put it off for a few seconds and almost forget. All that's left is the feeling that there was something you were intending to do, whatever it was. And when you try to recall what exactly the thing was, instead of going straight to the burrito in the microwave, your mind takes a quick moment to just stupidly echo the name of the person you're in love with, like your shitty lunch has anything the fuck to do with them? Yes, well, that's how your grandfather was to me, Yuugi. A repeating name and a constant feeling that I'd forgot something. There's not a person I've met who's been able to drive the mantra of your grandfather's name from my mind. I'm so sorry he's gone."

Yuugi nodded silently. After a moment, he asked if Ryuuji wanted more tea, although Ryuuji had been the one to make the tea in the first place. It was hard to think what else to say, but something needed to be said. He couldn't just let the condolences hang in the air between them unacknowledged.

"I'm also sorry," said Yuugi. "For everything."

"Well, at least I have great friends like all you guys now."

"We should all hang out one day."

"Anzu's already out of town."

"Oh yeah. I forgot."

"At any rate, I'll come visit you again. Maybe in a couple of days. To see how you're holding up."

"You're not going to try to convince me to team up with you against Magic & Wizards, are you?"

"No, of course not."

"Well…I've changed my mind."

"What?"

"I'll help you. I'm tired of how things are. It's going to be a long retirement for me if no-one gets over this game. I'll never escape it."

"You're grieving. You're not in your right state of mind."

"Will that affect the shadow magic at all?"

"Well, no, but I'm not here to take advantage of your personal tragedy."

"You've got cold feet."

"No. I just like to think I have a tad bit more of a moral center, maybe a little of something called tact, too—"

"Is there anything I can do now?"

"I didn't really bring my whole plan with me. I kinda put that whole thing aside when you said you weren't going to help me."

"Really? You said you'd wait."

"I lied. Honestly, I was just trying to get the last word. I actually believed you when you said no."

"Well, now I'm saying yes. I've come around, and I see your point. When you visit in a few days, have everything ready. I want to get started as soon as possible. If we don't start this soon, I'm afraid I'll…well…."

"You'll see reason and back out."

"Probably."

"In that case, I'll be back the day after tomorrow."

"I'll be here. I'll tell Jounouchi and Shizuka not to come over."

"Awesome. Let's destroy the world, then, I guess. And by world I mean the twisted reality in which we currently live. The planet itself will be fine. So will all the people. We're just going to take Magic & Wizards off its pedestal."

"It's long overdue for that, I think."

Yuugi extended a hand across the table to Ryuuji. Ryuuji took it and they shook. Yuugi's grip was much firmer, more determined. Ryuuji was still baffled at the sudden change. On his side, the handshake was uneven, hesitant. He wondered just what sort of help he'd enlisted in bringing Yuugi Mutou into his confidence.

Yuugi, meanwhile, felt his long frustration feeding into and mingling with the thrill of finally taking some shape of action against what had held him back so long. The sensation coursed through him like power, real power. It was related to how powerful he felt after finally conquering a challenging opponent in a duel, but it was much more personal and profound than that. Destroying an opponent only lost his opponent the game. Any lasting damage inflicted was confined to the statistical, intangible metric of player value and reputation.

Shadow magic destroyed things in an authentic way. Shadow magic was real power. That sort of destruction left an actual mark on the world itself. That was what Yuugi wanted to do now. He wanted to leave a mark. He wanted to destroy that twisted reality in which they currently resided. He wanted change.


	10. Chapter 10

Not once in Seto Kaiba's entire life had he ever kicked a whimpering dog or puppy. He was of half a mind to sue the offending tabloid for slander, but then it would've looked like Seto had something to hide. People would mutter that the reason he'd overreacted was because he really _did_ kick puppies for fun. It would've been a PR nightmare.

To be perfectly fair, Seto's entire life was a veritable minefield of endless PR nightmares lying in wait for him. Each day was a game of one hundred decisions between ninety-nine public missteps and one near-impossible compromise. There was rarely a right or wrong choice; there was only the choice he could live with. His public was never pleased.

A perfect PR disaster was waiting to happen at that very moment, even as Seto lowered the tabloid paper in his hand and made a rhetorical question of "who cares about this dog shit?", signifying to his assembled team that they would take no action against slander today. Across the room, fidgeting anxiously in a way only perceptible to Seto, was the family manservant/bodyguard, Isono. As the damage control team of the PR department excused themselves politely and left, Seto finally allowed Isono to come forward.

"I believe I need to preface what I'm going to say with a quick question," said Isono. "But first, may I take a seat, sir?"

"You have fifteen minutes, Mr. Isono. Standing or sitting, I don't really care."

"Thank you, sir," said Isono with genuine gratefulness as he pulled up a chair to the desk Seto sat behind like a corporate god on his celestial throne. Isono leaned across the wide, empty desk and motioned for Seto to lean in as well. Seto humored Isono, as the beads of sweat forming on Isono's brow told Seto that Isono was serious.

"What's the big damn problem?"

"Do you remember the extra training I underwent in your last year of high school? The extremely unorthodox training your brother requested I undergo, and which you never agreed was necessary? The…uh…the training with the shadow magic?"

At the mentioned of magic, Seto's neutral expression grew stern and critical. He glowered at Isono, daring him to continue. Isono faltered for a moment, but pressed on.

"Well, see, because of this training, part of my duties as your head security officer includes a sort of weekly check-up on your aura to see if there are any magical threats to you. Until recently, I had no idea if it even worked, but it's a part of my Monday morning routine at this point, really. I've always recited the spells and looked into at the drops of ink disperse in the bowl, but I always felt nothing. Or well, I felt like a fool to be completely honest, but—"

"What's your point?"

"My point is that there's a threat to you. To everyone, but especially you. Someone is going to use you to perform a great evil."

"How the hell can you know that?"

"In the ink I saw the hands reaching for you. From the shadows. From the place where the dark magic comes from."

Seto automatically glanced to either side, as though assuring himself there were no disembodied hands present in the room. Or worse, any eavesdroppers. It was clear. Only he and Isono were in the office, and thank heaven for that, because Seto would never live it down if anyone overheard this ridiculous conversation.

"How are things with you, Mr. Isono?" asked Seto in a very slow, deliberate voice. "Are you having any problems at home? Any stress or anxiety related to your private life? Normally I wouldn't ask about this sort of thing, but if it's in any way affecting your ability to handle your professional duties, there're many other ways to go about asking for a little time off…."

"Of course not, sir. I haven't taken a day off in over a decade."

"So what you're saying is you're long overdue."

"What I'm saying is that there's a very real, magic threat aimed at you, Mr. Kaiba."

Seto sighed. "That's where you're wrong; magic isn't real."

"I thought so, too, but what I saw—"

"Clearly you're suffering some sort of fatigue. A decade is a long time to go without a single day off. Even I take days off, although no-one believes me when I tell them. You need a rest. I see that I've been taking your dedication to your job for granted. I'd assumed that you were the way you were because you had no life, to be honest, but clearly this is a cry for help."

"Please, Mr. Kaiba, I'm scared for your safety. Please consider what I'm telling you seriously."

"This is ridiculous. I won't waste my serious consideration it. I'm going to give you a week off, because I'm pretty sure that's what you're really asking me for. You look ill. Don't come in tomorrow. Stay home and recuperate."

"I'm sick with worry, Mr. Kaiba. If anything happens to you or your brother…."

"Nothing will happen."

"I'm out of my depth, here, Mr. Kaiba. I have no idea how to protect you from what's coming. I don't remember anything except how to find out the threats, not how to confront them. It's been so long since my training in these matters."

"I'm going to have to call someone in to escort you out if you insist on arguing with me, Mr. Isono. It'll be an embarrassment for you, seeing how you're the one who normally drags people out of this room for me."

"But Mr. Kaiba…."

Seto reached for the phone in suggestion of a threat. Swiftly, Mr. Isono stood and began pulling his chair back to where it had been before. Seto nodded in approval as he sat back in his desk chair.

"See yourself out, Mr. Isono, and don't forget you're on paid leave tomorrow and the rest of the week. I look forward to seeing you refreshed and of sound mind once more on Monday morning. Goodbye."

Isono bowed stiffly and wished Seto a good day before taking his leave. Seto sighed in annoyance once the man had gone. He wondered if it might be time to replace Isono. It was a shame; the man had been with the family for decades. Still, it was no good having a security officer who'd lost his mind.


	11. Chapter 11

Seto idly adjusted his long metal cuffs like handless gauntlets that went halfway up his arm. There was an itch somewhere past his wrist where he couldn't reach, and it was beginning to frustrate him with its persistence. He glanced up and down the hall for any of the lab technicians, but they'd left all together to service the gaming robot Seto was supposed to be testing firsthand today. The coast couldn't be clearer.

Seto removed a narrow pen from the inside pocket of his coat where he kept his checkbook on him at all times in case he was called upon to overcome whatever obstacle with money. When you were one of the richest and most powerful men on the planet, it often turned out that most of your problems boiled down to how much money you were willing to throw down at a moment's notice to resolve at them. Right now, though, Seto's biggest problem was his itching arm. Instead of applying money to this, for money would not serve him here, he used his small check-writing pen to slip under his close-fitting cuffs and scratch.

By the time the technicians returned, Seto was sitting cool and itch-free with his legs crossed, waiting.

"Mr. Kaiba, the DuelMaster2000 is ready. We're ready to begin the run."

"We're calling it the Duel _Master_? Please. It's a dueling _minion_ , if anything."

"Sorry, sir. It's just so much more advanced than the previous models that that we deemed it necessary to name it with a higher status to reflect the progression fro—"

"Just stick with DuelBot715. It's a DuelBot, and it's the seven hundred and fifteenth iteration of its line. No point giving it delusions of grandeur. I'm the only dueling master here. Or anywhere."

The technician in charge nodded to one of his subordinates, who immediately ran off, presumably to fix the error of the machine's name at that very moment. By the time Seto arrived to the training room, the name "DuelMaster2000" had been taped over with masking tap with the words "DuelBot715" scrawled over it in a shaky hand.

Seto adjusted his stance as he lifted his duel disk up to chest height. There was a whispered, metallic whirl of gears as the duelbot lowered itself from where it was suspended above in the scaffolding. It positioned itself within Seto's line of sight, tiny lights flashing as it powered up and prepared to face off. A technician stepped forward to flip a coin, determining that Seto would go first, and then stepped back into the observation room.

Seto lay his first monster in defense mode, set a trap, and ended his turn. The duelbot, human-shaped from the torso up, moved as though it were looking down at its hand with eyes that didn't actually see. If these advanced animatronics were going to be facing off against people at KaibaLands the world over, they needed to have something of a human aspect. Players liked to look an opponent in the eye, to feel an emotional connection that couldn't be attained when opposing a faceless machine. Machine or not, when the opponent lost, the winner needed the illusion that the loss had hurt. Victory wasn't nearly so sweet without the contrasting bitterness of defeat.

Regrettably, machines weren't capable of giving a fuck. Winning and losing were both the same: nothing but inevitable outcomes to disparate sequences of events. Thus, Seto needed to artificially make his machines appear more human by making them bemoan defeat and exalt victory. Seto did this for the benefit of the people these machines competed with in his KaibaLand amusement parks, as Seto, much like the machines in some ways, personally didn't give a fuck. He was completely incapable of suspending his disbelief and treating a machine as though the machine were alive or that winning against a machine meant something.

Indeed, defeating a machine hurt Seto more than it thrilled him, though he very nearly beat the machines every time. A machine was a creation, and thus only as clever and capable as its creator could make it. If the machine couldn't defeat Seto or at least come close, then Seto had failed that machine. In conjunction, Seto had then also failed himself and every part of him reflected back pathetically in the shadows of his genius mind that were all of his creations.

Seto frowned at the duelbot as it took far too long to consider its move in absolute silence. It was supposed to have said something at least, some lame remark about taking him down or showing him who was the real duelist. Seto looked over to the anxious faces of the technicians and scientists in the observation room, all of them wringing their hands and none of them looking back.

"I thought you said it was fully on-line," said Seto into his headset microphone. "Is it still booting up? It's not supposed to wait this long, and it hasn't told me anything about its intention to kick my ass."

"Perhaps it's still thinking?" offered a technician with optimism so forced it sounded like nothing but fear.

"It doesn't think," said Seto. "It calculates, and it doesn't take this long. We have to program it to pause for various intervals between moves to give the impression it's thinking, but don't ever confuse the illusion with how long it actually takes the machine to decide its moves. Perhaps it selected a pause of ten minutes instead of ten seconds because of a faulty coding. Check the times on the deliberation intervals for errors."

There was a flutter of activity in the observation room as six people at once hurried to address a single problem. Seto groaned and crossed his arms, waiting without patience. Far across the room, the duelbot ran its hand and twiddled its fingers uselessly back and forth over its cards, as though unable to decide which ones to select. Seto watched the stupid thing and chuckled, morbidly amused by its utter inability to function because somewhere in its control center its code had been fucked over by a simple typographical error.

Seto heard the smooth sound of slipping cards falling against each other like too many pages flipped at once in a book. They fluttered to the floor from ten feet above, dead, twirling leaves descending from the released grip of the duelbot. Some slid. Others clattered. Seto grumbled in disapproval and shot a disgruntled look over to glass panel of the observation room.

When Seto looked back to the duelbot, he was faintly alarmed to see its face directed to him, as though it were watching him. The card selecting hand still danced over empty space, giving the machine an eerie, uncoordinated aspect.

"You're going down," said a mechanical voice from the speakers in the wall. Seto sneered. Well, at least the empty taunts had been fixed.

"I'm going to take you down," said the voice.

Seto continued to scoff at the machine. He wondered if it was going to sit here and taunt him for ten minutes before attempting to make a move with cards it no longer held. The practice run was for all intents over at this point. Seto had only scheduled an hour and half for this, and time was almost up. They'd have to schedule another run for later in the week.

"Down with the king."

Seto was already turning to go, but paused. He looked back at the duelbot, which was now perfectly still and silent.

"Excuse me?" asked Seto, not even sure if asking questions would elicit a response, but unable to control his urge to face this strange new development with the utmost incredulity.

"Down with the king."

"Where the hell did you learn that?" asked Seto. He was asking himself the question, not the machine. The machine had no comprehension of questions directed at itself. The machine had no sense of self. It didn't know that it learned, and had no idea where that learning ever came from. Each updated created something new that had never been. The machine didn't accumulate knowledge and experience like a person. It hadn't been designed to be the sort of machine that could teach itself.

"Down with the—"

"King! Yes, I know," recited Seto along with the mechanical voice. He was growing irritated. He took a step towards the observation room instead of the exit in order to give his subordinates a piece of his mind now that the duelbot was stuck on some kind of bizarre loop.

After three steps, Seto froze. He'd heard the soft sound, the whirl of the gears indicating movement. He looked back to the duelbot. The duelbot stared blindly at him, having turned its head to follow Seto as he'd crossed the room.

"Well that's fucking weird," said Seto. He wanted to step forward, to approach the duelbot, but a sudden doubt left him rooted in place. He hated that he didn't move. He despised the fact that a glitch in a fucking machine had him filled with such trepidation. Angrily, he strode forward. To his surprise, the duelbot also shot forward, as though to meet him.

The duelbot wasn't a strong machine. It'd been designed to fight with cards, not with strength. There was no power in its grip that superseded what was necessary to hold slips of laminated card stock. Therefore, then it reached for Seto's arm and throat, its fingers were easily broken. A shout of alarm came much too late from the observation room as the boss of every person in that room fought off the human torso of the duelbot that had so suddenly and unexpectedly lashed out against him.

"The hell are you idiots even doing?" demanded Seto angrily into microphone of his headset as he easily dispatched the duelbot. He didn't go for the machine's head like an amateur who didn't even know his own damn product, but flipped open the control panel where the torso met the base so that he could remove the real brain of the machine. The duelbot went limp and lifeless in an instant; the only damage sustained being that to the fingers and half an arm Seto had needed to remove to get behind the flailing idiot more easily. Seto didn't leave needless messes when he took someone—or something—down. Clean and efficient was the only way Seto knew how to operate.

"Mr. Kaiba!" exclaimed another technician in stunned terror. Seto said nothing and handed over the components he'd deftly removed from the control panel, as well as each finger and the segment of arm. These were accepted by the first three technicians hurrying out from the observation room as Seto stormed past. With a fourth he left his duel disk, and a fifth his headset. Everyone else cringed back and got the fuck out of his way.

Seto all but threw himself into the chair before the computers. He snapped for the staff to take the duelbot to the workshop for repairs. Beyond that, they could leave him the fuck alone, as they were all good for nothing, and he was going to have to do all this shit himself if he wanted it done right. He'd see them all later in the workshop after he finished checking the code. Maybe they could at least show him they could put a fucking duelbot back together without Seto holding their fucking hands through that, too.

The team of technicians and scientists hurried to detach the duelbot from the long mechanical arm it was fixed to. Swiftly and sheepishly, they rolled the main body of the machine out of the practice room on a cart. Seto remained behind, alone, fuming over the lines of code as he searched for the offending mistake that had lead to such bizarre, erratic behavior from his creation.


	12. Chapter 12

"It was a remnant of code from a jousting simulation the bot had been assigned to before in the Medieval world of one of our European parks. You know, one of the robot theaters popular in foreign markets where Magic & Wizards doesn't keep people coming around by itself."

"Yeah, Seto, I read the report after I heard it attacked you."

"If that can be called an attack. If it'd wanted to kill me, it would've had to knock me down and then pummel me with its weight. All it did was try to grab me, which is useless."

"The report said it went for your throat."

"I haven't read the report yet. Sounds like someone got a bit carried away with the exaggeration. I regret to inform you that, regardless of whatever you might've heard, the dreaded uprising of the machines has been postponed. Everything's fine, Mokuba."

"Why did you challenge it?"

"It was a duel."

"No, I mean when you knew it was broken, you went towards it. You triggered it to attack you, you know. Why? Why didn't you just continue on to the control room?"

"How was I to know it was going to lunge? I'd assumed it was a much higher quality product than it turned out to be. I didn't know it was following a previous set of commands. I don't write the robot theaters."

"You should've been more careful. You know how much the duelbots cost. Plus, you could've been hurt."

"I will crush however many duelbots I want to, Mokuba. They are mine."

"You know the board trusts me over you, Seto. Something about me being more relatable and normal and business-minded. Something about you being a brilliant visionary who prefers to tinker around in his lab rather than preside over his bill-footing company. So, half destroy another duelbot, and we'll see what I can make the executive board do to you."

"You wouldn't dare."

"Someone has to keep you in check, Seto. I've accepted that it must be me. Investor confidence went through the roof when you gave me control of the board. People like the idea that you aren't single-handedly running a company as massive as KaibaCorp alone. People like to know you can share."

"I wouldn't have put you in charge if I'd known you were going to start telling me what to do."

"But I've always been telling you what to do. Only, now I have the power to actually force you to listen."

"Don't make yourself my enemy, Mokuba."

"I'm not your enemy, Seto. I'm your conscience and your better judgment. Please don't make _me_ your enemy."

"Fine. But I can't promise more bots won't have issues. I'm going to have to check them all myself before we can complete more runs. It'll take another two months until we can start updating the duelbots in the parks."

"Two whole months? Are you trying to spite me?"

"Do you want duelbots malfunctioning with guests? _With_ _kids_?"

"Okay. Take however long you need."

"Thank you, Mr. Kaiba."

"Shut up, Seto."

"Whatever Mr. Kaiba says."

"Go back to work."

"Or what? You'll fire me, Mokuba?"

"I'll hang up on you."

"Do it. You need to practice hanging up on people anyway."

There was an empty, fuzzy sound as Mokuba indeed hung up on Seto, exactly as Seto had told him to. Seto smirked and placed his phone on the desk. He turned back to the computer, trying to find all the needles of errors in the variable haystacks of code required to run a basic duelbot.


	13. Chapter 13

Things were happening at the corners of Seto's vision that weren't supposed to be happening. He'd notice it almost immediately, as he was always quick to note any deviation from the norm in all that transpired in his vicinity. The changes slowly began to disturb him.

The first glitch occurred with the deck of rare and exquisite monster cards he often shuffled through on slow evenings. It was a relaxing hobby of his to admire the fine illustrations he and his team had so meticulously rendered in three dimensions for his monster simulators. No matter how closely Seto studied the details, strived and sweated to convert each shape and texture into something very near to reality, he never tired of looking at the originals. They were his beautiful and cherished old friends, who'd served him faithfully and still held a place in his heart, his affection unwavering even after many of the cards had been rotated out of his competition deck.

Recently, while occupied with studying the cards in his hands, Seto occasionally felt as if the deck itself disappeared. Literally, it vanished. He'd look towards it with a sudden jolt, and it'd be gone. At first, he'd shrugged and thought he'd misplaced it, but after looking away to search for some sign if where it might be, he'd find the deck had reappeared in its original location. Every time this happened, it felt as though the deck laughed at him.

Seto would shake his head at that point and decide it was time to turn in. He took it as an indication of fatigue, that he'd been working too hard. He was seeing things. It was a message from his silent, mortal body to his genius, ascended brain in the only manner the body knew how to express itself.

Seto was having trouble rationalizing what happened next, as such "glitches" in his life intensified. His heart gradually became filled with a silent dread of no discernible source, as though something alien had crawled up inside him and set up residence where it could dial Seto's emotions up and down and in every direction Seto didn't need them to go. When he went to the robotics lab to work on codes and test the results in the machines, there was a formless fear in the back of his mind that all the duelbots were fed up and at the point of insurrection. Endlessly ashamed of such feelings, Seto refused to accept that a duelbot launching itself at him had rattled him more than he'd thought. He dealt with the fear by bravely facing each and every duelbot personally in thier trial runs, taking them all down one by one in especially punishing duels that would've destroyed the competitive confidence of a real person for the rest of their life. The only tangible result of this was that the technical staff now cowered from him with doubled intensity, terrified at the crackling energy of all the unceasing fury and aggression Seto layered into every duel.

Before the start of each duel, Seto would fit his personal duel disk to his arm and activate it. This was where the second glitch arose and haunted him. At least once a day, sometimes even before the duel disk was activated, there'd already be a reading on the panel that told him the count of his life points. It was always some number less than four thousand, clearly visible and real even if he touched the screen, but the moment he blinked or looked away, it'd be gone. The panel would once again be empty, or at the standard count of four thousand typical at the start of a duel.

Seto had replaced his duel disk three times, and the error didn't cease. He checked the programming. He strengthened the anti-hacking defenses and monitored the device constantly to see if there was any outside interference going on. Nothing appeared to be wrong.

…Nothing except the changing numbers. And the numbers always changed. He began to track them. He noticed with a chill that they were descending by the day.

What would happen when they came to zero?

The third glitch was the least coy of the series. Plainly put, Seto began to see duel monsters, as real as any projected hologram, in the world around him. They always had pained expressions, seemed to always be asking him for something, and he had no idea what any of it was. It was incredibly difficult not to acknowledge them, despite how fleeting their presences were. In a duel with a duelbot, he'd mistaken the apparition from his mind with a monster on the field. He'd ordered it to attack while the technicians in the control room fell silent. Nervously, the unluckiest one told him that the monster he'd just directed wasn't in play. Seto had been mortified, claimed he was simply tired from doing all his team's damn work for them these days, and abandoned the duel. He cancelled all further runs for the next two days.

Seto questioned his sanity as the mysterious occurrences and feeling of unexplained dread increased in frequency. It wasn't the first time he'd ever stopped to ask himself if he was mentally all there. He'd walked the narrow edge between madness and reason before, years ago. The tale of his adolescence was marred by acts and beliefs that were truly deranged. He wondered if that sort of madness ever left a person, or if it just evolved with changes in the sufferer's disposition and maturity.

Strangely enough, there was a sort of comfort in believing he might be going crazy. It was unfortunate, but it was real. It wasn't a magical threat, as Isono seemed to constantly remind Seto of with beseeching eyes but the tactful awareness that Seto would only argue and send him away if he actually said anything. No, Seto much preferred to believe he was hallucinating rather than accept that magic was happening.

Seto withdrew from many of his social obligations, afraid that, until his condition was diagnosed and a plan was created to manage it, he might run the risk of a mental break in public. The damage such a break might cause would be irreparable. Instead, he began to spend long, empty evenings at home, lying that he'd been consumed by a new project and couldn't be separated from it. What he actually did was pace in his study and strongly consider taking up drinking, because being a drunk would be much easier and less shameful to admit to Mokuba than the truth. At least being a drunk provided your loved ones with the illusion that they could help you as you slowly became a wreck of your former self. Madness, on the other hand, had no cure.

Isono was the only one listening in on Seto's increasingly restless evenings. He kept the household staff away. Seto had no desire to see anyone, even the mostly invisible custodians who dusted shelves and straightened the kicked-up edges of rugs while averting their eyes from Seto as though he were the sun and would blind them.

Seto needed to relax, to clear his mind and find some kind of peace. He eyed the case in the corner where his cards waited, untouched for nearly a week. Seto didn't want to see them ghost into the shadows, flickering to and away, causing him to question himself further than he dared.

But what did Seto have to lose? He was seeing fucking duel monsters outside his office window making him drop his coffee and baffle his secretary who'd never known him to lose his grip on anything, even a cup. Little did the secretary know that the coffee was the least of what was slipping from Seto's control these days.

Seto removed the cards from their case, shuffling through them in search of his three Blue Eyes White Dragons. They made Seto happy, or at least gave him the contented feeling Seto deemed to be happiness. They were his prize and his closest companions through all his competitive trials. They hadn't always won together, but they'd always been together. He didn't like that, of all the duel monsters he been seeing, staring after him with their forlorn faces, he hadn't once caught sight of his Blue Eyes.

The first Blue Eyes card was at the top of the deck, generously allowing him to find it immediately. This he placed on the small coffee table and then sat down to pick through the rest of the deck. He went quickly, checking only for the familiar flash of silvery white and blue. The room was too dark to make out many of the cards' faces, though he knew only by the colors as they flitted by which cards he'd already passed.

Something new happened then. It was the fourth glitch. The further Seto delved into the shrinking deck, the more the cards blurred and became the same. The figures were darker, more sinister, gradually replacing his precious dueling companions with one face and posture indefinitely repeated: the face of the Dark Magician.

Seto threw the cards down and sat back with enough force to send the chair a few inches with him in the same direction. Every card was the same. All the cards were Dark Magicians. They stared sternly up at him without feeling from the table and the floor at his feet. Seto swallowed, but made no sound. The only thing he could do was stare.

"They're all magicians," said a voice that for a few seconds Seto believed had come from his own mind, as it had read his exact thoughts. However, it wasn't actually the voice of Seto going crazier. It was merely Isono entering the room and stopping somewhere over Seto's left shoulder in shock as he caught sight of the table.

"You mean you can also see this?" asked Seto in a whisper. It hadn't struck him yet what this might mean. He was fighting the realization as hard as he could.

"Yes, Mr. Kaiba, of course I can see it. I'm the one who's been trying to warn you all this time. Look how they're closing in on the Blue Eyes White Dragon. It's like what I keep seeing in the ink and water."

Seto hadn't realized the Blue Eyes on the table remained unchanged. He saw it as Isono said it, with the magicians closing in, ready to destroy him.

"So, I'm not crazy," said Seto bitterly. Isono took it as a question.

"Of course not, Mr. Kaiba. You were just in denial. It seems to have cleared up now."

"Indeed it does." Seto relaxed in his chair and shut his eyes. He wouldn't be surprised if all the cards went back to normal once he opened them. "And…what did you want, Mr. Isono?"

"Pardon?"

"Why did you come in here?"

"Oh, yes. Your brother is calling you. He couldn't reach your cell, so, he called the phone in the estate office. The butler came to tell me that you need to call him back."

"What did he want?"

"I think it was a dinner invitation for tomorrow."

"Call him, and tell him I'm busy."

"With what?"

"Invent something."

"This is the third time you've turned him down this week. At this rate, he's going to show up himself, and then you won't be able to get away from him. I can't keep him out of his own house. All I can do is keep him from this room."

"It doesn't matter if he brings himself here tomorrow. We won't be home."

"We won't?"

"We're going to pay a visit to wherever the hell taught you shadow magic. Make the calls and create an itinerary. I'd prefer to head out in the afternoon, if possible."

"So sudden, Mr. Kaiba? I don't even know if the man's in town. He hasn't answered any of my calls."

"That's because it was you. No-one ignores my calls. Even if they try, I'll find them."

"I'll see what I can do. And I'll tell the butler to call your brother back and tell him you're busy."

"For once, it's not a lie. Shame he won't believe it, though."


	14. Chapter 14

Yuugi was sorting through his deck at the table while Ryuuji sat cross-legged on the floor. They were in Ryuuji's apartment, because Ryuuji never had company. He preferred to visit people at mutually agreed upon locations that didn't involve him playing host to anyone. Yuugi could see the reason in this. Plus, it meant no-one ever visited Ryuuji's apartment unannounced.

There was chime proclaiming the arrival of a text message. Yuugi took up his phone and checked it.

"Kaiba's people got back to me," said Yuugi as he scrolled down the message. "They agreed to the charity duel. They reserve the right to call off the match up to a day in advance, and I'm not allowed to complain if they do."

"I've heard rumors from higher up that Kaiba's been MIA recently, working on some big idea. I haven't seen him in ages at any of the meetings or functions. He's probably innovating, changing the world, whatever."

"Do you think he knows what's going on?"

"How would he know? Kaiba doesn't even believe in magic."

"But maybe he's got, like, a magic studying department, and they do, like, magic security."

"Why would he dedicate a whole security force to something he doesn't believe exists? That'd be like installing flame-throwers in your desert fortress because someone told you once that in Tibet they have Yetis. That's not something you'd just prepare for just in case. You'd have to believe there was a real, plausible threat first."

"I was just wondering, because I can feel the shadows," said Yuugi. He glanced around him, noticing the room had gone darker, although nothing visually had changed. It was as though a shadow had fallen over his mind's eye, but not the physical ones. "They follow me home from here. They cling really close, right on my skin, hanging off every hair on my body. How do we know our target doesn't also sense something?"

"He'll just think he's going crazy. Kaiba's too rational to see what's really going on."

"I don't know. I've had doubts about just how 'rational' he is in the past…."

"The craziest thing about Seto Kaiba is how crazy dedicated he is to his bullshit view of the world, Yuugi. We have absolutely nothing whatsoever to worry about. Now, hand me your deck real quick."

"I'm preparing my strategy for my match against Kaiba. I've been out of competition for over a year and half. His gameplay has evolved a lot in that time."

"I'll let you get back to that when I'm done. I need to read over your cards. I don't have a deck of my own, and anyway, you're the one who's going to play the shadow game."

Yuugi collected the cards from the table, but watch Ryuuji curiously as he did so. Ryuuji noticed.

"What?"

"Well," said Yuugi slowly, almost ashamed though uncertain why. "Are you serious that you don't…have a deck? Like, you've never made one? Not ever?"

"I've practiced with different decks, but no, I've never really personalized my own signature deck or anything. I didn't really get that involved with Magic & Wizards."

"How?"

"What?"

"How could you play so many games and yet not get involved with Magic & Wizards? How's that even possible?"

Ryuuji accept the deck that Yuugi handed over to him and began to shuffle it quickly. He thought a moment before answering, letting the cards slide back and forth between his hands without paying them much attention.

"I dunno," said Ryuuji at last. He shrugged. "Building and maintaining a deck would've taken a lot of time and dedication, and I just wasn't feeling it. Perfecting a deck ultimately requires using the deck and seeing how it works against others. And if you invest that much time into Magic & Wizards, it kind of becomes the only thing you do."

"So what do you do when someone challenges you to a duel, then?"

"I tell them I don't have a deck, so no, and I'll take a rain check."

"But…you really like games. How does someone who likes games not have a deck?"

"I like lots of games. I have preferences for certain play styles and game types, but I've never had a favorite game that I dedicated more attention to than any other. Trust me, I know lots of games. I know more games than you do, inside and out. There's very little else to me but an encyclopedic knowledge of games. That's why it personally offends me that Magic & Wizards makes very little room for other games to succeed anymore. I'm so fucking bored."

"I know an awful lot about games, Ryuuji. I'm not sure you know more than I do. I was always beating you at our game nights in high school."

"I'm something of a game academic; it doesn't mean I'm very good at or will win every single game out there. You're very good _at_ games. That's our primary difference, you see. I _know_ games well. You _play_ games well. I can tell you where different gaming mechanics came from, what sorts of games are the oldest in the world, how different games are related to each other, and how certain pieces got their names. Everything I know, however, you put into practice. That's why you're the King of Games. Because everything I know, you can always learn. But for me, I'll never play at your level."

Yuugi grew thoughtful, considering Ryuuji's words. He clasped his hands between his knees and stared at the floor beyond. He indirectly observed Ryuuji selecting cards from the top of the shuffled deck, muttering their names as he went and taking notes on a pad of paper in his lap. After a moment, Yuugi spoke.

"I still don't understand why you don't even have a rudimentary deck."

Ryuuji sighed and turned over the next card, not deigning to answer the exact same question a second damn time.


	15. Chapter 15

The footsteps in the hall never meant anything. They would get nearer and nearer, closing in but never arriving. If he looked, there'd be no-one. The hall would be empty. Somewhere in the shadows, in the thin, illuminated points around the frames of doors leading into the apartments of his neighbors, he imagined something was chuckling at him. Something in the darkness couldn't stop grinning at him behind its hand, trying to play coy and failing.

Yuugi sighed and didn't look, even as the footsteps broke into a trot. Even as they were so close he could nearly feel the warmth of the hand of a stranger reaching out. He swung open the door to his apartment and entered.

Every light in the apartment was on except the bedroom. Yuugi found it distasteful, what he felt his fingers brushing when he groped in the dark for a light switch. The only way to combat this had been to leave every light burning, filling the rooms with a faint hum that pulsed like life and kept the deepest, darkest shadows away.

Ryuuji had warned him about this. The place where the magic came from was a prison, and anything let out for even an instant would grasp at anything within reach to keep from being pulled back in. Yuugi had carried plenty of the remnants of the spells home with him in the past few weeks. They hid in the places the light didn't touch, waiting for night to fall and the opportunity to creep about. Yuugi went through with a flashlight daily to drive out the largest stowaways, as they were the most powerful and the most annoying. Or, to say, the most powerfully annoying. They were generally liars and impossible to deal with, so he'd stopped trying to reason with them.

Yuugi went to the sideboard, now empty of flowers and most photos, and took out a small, thin, black candle like the sort one might crown a dreary birthday cake with. Like cockroaches, the shadowy forms inside the cabinet retreated in erratic confusion with the arrival of the light. Yuugi smiled at them and shook his head.

"Time for a chat," said Yuugi softly into the stale air of the room as he set the black candle on the table. He opened the window a crack, letting a thin line of blue morning light touch the curtains. Dawn alone couldn't compete with the brilliant illumination of the apartment. Yuugi then took a seat on the sofa before the table, removing a lighter from his pocket. He lit the candle. The moment the wick caught the flame, every light inside the apartment was extinguished. The shadows assembled obediently in the flickering, uneven glow of the small candle, at full attention to Yuugi's call.

"Okay, good morning, guys," said Yuugi into the empty room filled with intangible darkness. "I would like to lay down the law a bit to any newcomers, as well as restate a few rules some of you may have forgot in the interim."

The shadows shifted, some apparently feeling a bit self-conscious that Yuugi still needed to address them directly and remind them of the rules after three weeks of cohabitation.

"Okay, so, you guys are to stay in the bedroom. Yesterday, Jounouchi was over, and one of you crept across his hand and made him think a spider had gone under his shirt. That was _not cool_. If you don't stay where you're told to stay, I am going to go into the bedroom with fifty high-intensity flash bulbs and light up every nook and cranny and recite this little piece of gibberish here that will banish you all back to the shadows from whence you shall never more escape."

Yuugi held up a slip of paper, cupping a hand over it to obscure the letters so that the darkness could get a better look. The shadows read over it and then cringed back meekly one by one as they finished.

"So your options are to play along nicely, or face eternal damnation. I think that's an easy, fair choice, right? I think I'm being reasonable. If anyone doesn't agree, there's the door."

Yuugi pointed to the open window.

"As I'm one of the centers of the spell being cast, it's best to stay in my home so you can haunt my personal effects. Leaving my home puts you at considerable risk. For example, should you take the door out, you'll enjoy a day of freedom flitting in the shadows of trees and birds and pedestrians. But, come sundown, when that window will be shut, you'll be unable to return. You'll mingle with and lose yourself in the darkness of night, and eventually you'll find yourself back in your realm. I don't know how it happens, it just does."

The shadows in the quivering light of the candle receded and expanded, as though twittering amongst themselves uncertainly. Yuugi held up a hand, and for the most part, the shadows grew still. The only movement was in direct reflection of the movement of the flame.

"You're always free to follow me out of the apartment, provided you stay close, but be warned that when I visit the shadow magician's apartment, you'll be unable to follow me inside. You must wait outside on the sidewalk. If night falls while you're outside, the darkness of night will come and consume you. The same goes for the game shop. For those of you that have asked me, yes, I have confirmed recently that my grandpa did indeed set a shadow barrier around the place."

The anxiously waiting shadows at the furthest edges of the room seemed to grow duller, crestfallen. They'd hoped to explore and inhabit Yuugi's childhood home, but now that dream had ended.

"Every six or seven days, I do a sweep of the apartment with stage lights just to sort of cull the herd, so to speak. Those of you who already know you're much too big and will be caught in the light, I'm really sorry. It's not personal. We have a tiny apartment here, so let's all work together. The spell will be cast in about a month or two, and at that time, you'll find yourself back in your realm. I hope you all have a pleasant stay until then, and make the most of your momentary separation from the inky and everlasting darkness of hellishness and fear that is your prison for eternity."

Yuugi smiled welcomingly and look about the room.

"Are there any questions?"

Silence reigned.

"Excellent. Now, off with you all to the bedroom. I'm going to put out the candle on the count of ten. So, ten…nine…eight…."

The room lightened considerably. The flickering, weak illumination of the candle became more of a cozy glow that filled the furthest reaches as the smoke-like shadows departed. Reaching two and then one in his count, Yuugi let out a small puff of air, and the lights in the room came back on in an instant. From the line of black beneath his bedroom door, the darkness writhed like a living thing. It seemed to watch him, uncertainty, faced with a cheeriness and calm disposition it couldn't fully read and found itself mesmerized by.

Yuugi threw open the window the rest of the way, and then switched off the lights. He lay himself across the smooth cushions of the sofa and shut his eyes to rest. Later today, he'd meet with Kaiba's people to rehearse the opening fanfare that would serve as a prelude to the charity match in two weeks. It hadn't yet been decided if Seto Kaiba would walk out normally, or descended on a jetpack after leaping from a passing blimp. Yuugi, of course, would do as Yuugi always did: stare and gape without comment either way.


	16. Chapter 16

Isono had to call at the door. Seto stayed back, in the car and out of the rain, waiting to see who might answer. Ten minutes passed, and Isono returned.

"I don't think anyone's home," said Isono into the partly rolled down window, shielding the narrow opening with an overly large, windproof-waterproof golf umbrella. "I've had security go around the residence. There's no sign of life here, either."

"How many more addresses have we got on file?"

"One, sir."

"Then I suppose that's our next stop."

Isono nodded a swift affirmative and then reassumed his position in the driver's seat. His team filed like stoic clowns into the car behind them, and they set out once more. Seto took up his book from his lap, listening as the heavy rain fell cold and hard against the car windows like pellets of ice or half-frozen insects. He shivered once in the chill air that had swept in with the opening of the door. Isono turned up the heating to compensate.

"We ought to arrive in twenty minutes, Mr. Kaiba," said the man in the navigator's seat, another of Isono's team and tasked with guarding Seto while Isono tried buzzers and knockers for signs of anyone home.

"Not nearly soon enough to make up for this wasted day," said Seto. He brought the book up to where he could see it better in the hazy, grey light of the rainy day approaching evening. At a red light, Isono reached back to turn on the backseat map-light. Seto didn't thank him for it.

They arrived to the final address in fifteen minutes, which spurred Seto to praise Isono for his daring driving given the meteorological conditions. Isono accept the compliment with perfect politeness. He took his umbrella back from his associate, whose left leg was by now perfectly drenched in the runoff after five similar stops that afternoon. Then, for the fifth and final time, he stepped out into the rain and hurried to the intercom at the gate.

Seto flicked a droplet from his knee, feeling the icy touch of the water that had already begun to soak through. The man in the navigator's seat wordlessly offered him a tissue. Seto turned it down.

It was difficult to make Isono out through the blurred glass of the window. The gate was part of a long, unbroken brick wall encased in shadow, as though night had already fallen beneath it. The back of Isono's black suit provided perfect camouflage for such an environment. His most subtle movements were totally obscured, but Seto could still make out the bobbing of the umbrella as Isono shifted his weight between his feet impatiently. Suddenly, the dome of the umbrella ducked down. Isono was leaning forward, conversing with someone, or perhaps with the intercom. It appeared as if for once, someone was actually home.

Isono hurried back to the car, and Seto lowered the window. He told Seto they'd been invited in. Isono's men would secure the perimeter first, and then, Seto would be able to leave the car and step inside. Would he prefer a coffee or a tea upon entering the residence? Seto expressed an utter incapability to care what was served to him. He hadn't come here to warm his bones.

Several minutes later,Seto emerged from the car with a small grunt of discomfort, having being unable to properly stand for the past three hours as they'd driven the whole map of the city in search of their quarry. This mysterious teacher of Isono's rivaled Seto himself for quantity of physical addresses. He didn't seem a man rooted to any place. It was oddly fitting for a shadow magician.

Seto's own men opened the gate for him and greeted him at the door. He was led by Isono to what looked like a library, although the house was too small to be the sort that would contain a whole room as extraneous as a library. A long couch that could double as a bed ran along the wall. Here seated, of everyone Seto Kaiba could ever have been said to tangentially "know" in his life, was Yuugi Mutou's weird friend, Ryou Bakura.


	17. Chapter 17

"Isono, I thought you said an old man taught you? This is a child."

"I figured this might be a magical disguise."

"This guy's name is Ryou Bakura. I fucking went to school with him. You don't remember? What the hell do I pay you for? He was one of the competitors who fell ill during Battle City. You should at least recognize him from that."

"To be perfectly honest, sir, plenty of people fell ill at that time."

"Yeah, well, he's the one with the white hair that fell ill."

"Maybe the magician is just disguised as—"

"Nope," said Ryou, interrupting Isono just as Seto was drawing in a quick breath to do the same. "I'm actually who Kaiba says I am. I don't know anything about magical disguises, either. I'm kind of curious what you have to tell me about."

"We're not here to tell you anything," said Seto. He shot out a hand with a single finger raised, ordering Ryou to silence while he directed his head security officer from the room. They walked out, making it all the way to the front door before stopping beneath the overhand outside while the rain poured and muted their lowered voices to everyone inside.

"What the hell, Isono? What's the name on this address?"

"Bakura, sir."

"You didn't tell me that was the man's name."

"I forgot the man's name. There are seven in his file alone, not even counting the names that the various residences are held under, so any name I knew him by was probably false. Indeed, one of his names has been reported dead. About twenty years ago. Some accident in Egypt. There was a body and everything. Very mysterious circumstances, but that's something you'd expect from a shadow magician, to be perfectly honest."

"You didn't check any of the names against anyone I might've know?"

"I did, yes, but I thought it was just a coincidence. It wasn't Ryou Bakura on the house. It was his father's name. Indeed, I called the museum to check on the director, but they told me he was on a sabbatical. He takes them fairly often, I'm told. It's a miracle he hasn't been made to resign at this point, but I suppose if you're a shadow magician, you could just…."

"Stop talking like magic is an excuse for everything wrong with this fucking picture, you idiot," said Seto. "You're right it's probably his father who we're looking for. I doubt it's an idiot like Ryou. That guy always played more the victim to shadow magic hijinks back when…magic was a thing that was rea—that was happening. Also, he's weird, and I don't like him."

"He seems perfectly polite."

"Too perfect. Plus he's really into convoluted, role-playing types of games with a million dice, so you know he's a bit in the clouds, mentally speaking. I really don't think he'll be able to tell us anything. He'll probably lie anyway. People like him enjoy inventing tales. Everything's just a fucking narrative."

"That seems…an odd judgment call, Mr. Kaiba."

"He also gives me fucking creeps, and I'd prefer not to work with him."

"Well, being a shadow magician's son…."

"We have no proof he's the son of whoever taught you."

"I saw a photo of Mr. Bakura before. He looks familiar."

"Maybe because he's the director the Domino City Museum? We've hosted galas there, attended exhibition openings, all of that. I think Mokuba might be on the board of trustees."

"No, I mean, there was a certain aura around him that gave the impression that—"

"Fine, then," said Seto before Isono could get into the details. If there was anything Seto despised more than the fact that magic hadn't died with the Pharaoh Atem, it was hearing about the mechanics of that still existing magic. "We'll just ask that guy where to find his father. I'm of half a mind to wait in the car for it, but it's cold out."

"We've prepared tea inside, sir."

"I'll have some tea, then. You do the talking. Get someone to bring me my book from the backseat."


	18. Chapter 18

Seto and Isono reentered the house and parted ways at the hall. Seto turned to the living room from which the tinkle of china already resonated. Isono continued on to the library to speak to Ryou Bakura.

Seto waited in silence with his tea and his book at a table in the corner of the living room while Isono and Ryou conversed. Twenty minutes later, Isono reappeared. To Seto's chagrin, Ryou was with him. Ryou took a seat at the table closer to Seto than Seto would've liked. Seto sighed and leaned back, furthering his distance from the former classmate he'd never rightly known and didn't care to enter any sort of confidence with.

"I'm very sorry you've been cursed, Kaiba," said Ryou with a concerned expression as though he'd been notified that Seto was slowly dying of an excruciating disease. Seto pretended to continue to read as if he hadn't heard Ryou, despite Ryou being the only one speaking.

"I believe it's a bit premature to be saying anyone's cursed," said Isono quickly. He took a seat across from Ryou. One of his men began setting cups and saucers before them. "Although the nature of the enchantment surrounding Mr. Kaiba isn't fully understood at the present time, we have little reason to believe this might be a full-blown curse. Curses, from what I recall, are fully realized spells that have arrived at their conclusions. What seems to be going on here is something that is preemptive to a large spell that is going to be cast, perhaps through the use of Mr. Kaiba as one of its anchoring points. In short, it seems as if shadows and illusions have begun to collect around Mr. Kaiba in anticipation of a much greater spell that threatens not only Mr. Kaiba, but the world."

Seto couldn't restrain a wince. No matter how many times he'd been forced to listen to Isono explain the situation, it was never something easy to take in. His pride ached with the strain of being subjected to such foolishness that shouldn't have even been real. Hell, he was pretty sure he'd come to this room to read and drink tea in peace so as not to have to hear all of these things again. Isono simply would not let Seto rest.

" _Please_ , Mr. Isono," said Seto. Isono looked away guiltily, realizing with great shame that he'd forgot the very sensitive nature of his master's condition. Ryou, perceptive to the change, tried to talk about something else.

"I've never been served tea in my own home," Ryou marveled as his cup was filled for him by one of six identically dressed assistants. "Is this even our tea? Are these even our cups?"

"The implements are yours. The tea is ours," said Isono. "Mr. Kaiba doesn't consume food from sources that haven't been properly vetted."

"Oh. I mean, our tea's just from the shop down the road," said Ryou, gesturing uselessly in the direct of a shop that neither Isono nor Seto would ever visit. "You haven't vetted the DominiMart? It's a pretty big chain."

"DominiMart doesn't supply the estate," said Isono. "Our relationship with that franchise is purely as a distributor of KaibaCorp branded products."

"Oh yeah, they've got that cereal. With the blue sprinkles and marshmallows. Blue Iced Toasted Oat Dragons."

Seto made a small, agitated sound and lowered his book. He lifted a hand to silence Isono and addressed the error himself, his voice full of stern reproach.

"No, the dragon-shaped, toasted oat cereal is just with blue and white icing. There are no marshmallows. The sprinkles and marshmallows are in the Dark Magician cereal. They're called 'magic marshmallows' and come in magenta and maroon swirls with mauve highlights. It's alliterative."

"Ah, yes," said Ryou. He shrank back at little at the intensity of the glare that'd been directed at him in response to his failure at knowing his duel monster themed breakfast cereals verbatim. "It, uh, turns the milk really pink. I remember now."

"I wouldn't know," said Seto with an indifferent shrug as he slipped a bookmark into the book and handed it behind him to a waiting assistant. "I don't eat kid's cereal."

Ryou wasn't sure if he found this hard to believe, or the absolute truest thing he'd ever heard about Seto Kaiba in his entire life. He decided not to question it.

"Has he told you where his father is?" asked Seto to Isono, once more speaking as though Ryou weren't even there. Ryou quietly drank his tea and complimented the nearest assistant on its quality in a bid to make the situation less awkward.

"He's travelling across the USA. Last Ryou heard, he was in the Wasatch Mountains. Apparently they have a lot of cicadas out there."

"When did he hear that?"

"Three weeks ago."

"The look on your face tells me that Ryou has no way of contacting the man."

"Affirmative. Ryou's housesitting for him. He doesn't know for how long."

"His father didn't leave an itinerary? Like, in case of emergency?"

"Apparently he never does."

"Well, fuck."

"Ryou's invited us to go through the library. There's some books on the occult that might be useful. There's more books in his father's room, but Ryou's not allowed in there."

"Skip the library. Go directly to the father's room."

"But he's not allowed…."

"I don't give a fuck if he's allowed. You're going in there, and you're going to look for whatever you might need."

Isono nodded seriously and turned to his men to give the orders that every room in the house was to be searched for occult books and objects. Ryou, who honestly hadn't been listening to a word of Seto and Isono's conversation, jumped to attention.

"You can't just search our house for whatever you feel like. This is a private residence."

"And this is a private force following my orders," said Seto. "There'll be no evidence we were here by the time we leave. You'll have a hard time proving this even happened. Calm down."

"I'll call the police," said Ryou. "Don't think I won't."

"You'd need a phone first," said Seto smugly. "You'll never get to one with my people around. I suggest you wait this all out patiently and finish your tea. It's getting cold, I think."

Ryou shot up quickly from his seat and went to the door. An assistant with impossibly wide shoulders barred the way. Ryou tried to get around them, but it was hopeless. He paced in search of some sort of weapon or object that would better make his case. There was nothing in the room but tea, various tea serving implements, and Seto Kaiba, who was oblivious to him and asking his assistant for his book back, except the person holding the book had already gone to search the house. Seto sighed deeply and slumped over in his chair, inconsolable. Ryou, who was about to take up a butter knife and try his luck with prying open a window before anyone stopped him, paused a moment and observed Seto.

"Why don't you ever look up?" asked Ryou, his curiosity overcoming his trepidation. He'd realized in an instant, as he caught a fleeting glimpse of the worn expression on Seto's face when Seto had been told his book wasn't there, that whatever Seto was looking for in the house was of the most critical importance. There was no chance Ryou would be allowed to impede the search in any way. No matter how much Ryou resisted and complained and recited his empty threats, he wasn't leaving this room until Seto allowed it.

"What do you mean?" asked Seto. He then made a very obvious point of looking up at Ryou, watching and staring directly into Ryou's face as Ryou sat down again. He continued to stare until the unceasingness of his gaze annoyed Ryou.

"Isono said you hallucinate sometimes, and so I was wondering if you're hallucinating right now and trying to hide it. Like, you keep reading your book in order to ignore whatever it is you're hallucinating is in the room with you."

"Do you need to say that stuff in the way that makes me sound the most fucking insane?"

"Mr. Isono made it sound like the whole reason you're here's because you're not crazy. This is something to do with shadow magic. It doesn't come from you; it comes from the shadows and it acts on you."

"It comes from the what?"

"The shadows. That's where all the shadow magic comes from. There's a covered well, bottomless, filled with equal parts magic and darkness, and that's where we draw the shadow magic from."

"Mr. Isono's told me something like that already. You seem to know a little more than nothing about shadow magic, Ryou Bakura."

"Oh, I know plenty _about_ magic. I can't do magic. To be honest, until now I wasn't sure I even believed there really was any magic beyond the Sennen Items and what happened to us when we were in high school. But, I do know a fair bit about magic and the supernatural, as like, a topic. I've told Mr. Isono that. I offered to help any way I could."

"If you doubt the existence of magic beyond the Sennen Items, how would you help? I could just be insane. Hell, I was even kind of hoping I was insane. Still kind of am."

"Mr. Isono showed me this weird trick with ink in a bowl of water…."

"Oh yeah, his fucking aura check-ups. You don't have to tell me. I've heard enough about that already. Apparently you can't check your own aura, so I just have to take his word for it what he sees in mine."

"I saw it, too. It's really creepy. The whole world is in danger, and it's all concentrated on you and one other point reaching for you."

"Apparently the shadows are reaching for me. Can't wait until they fucking get here and get it over with. I can't fucking stand waiting around like this."

"Well, no, shadows don't reach out for people on their own. They're directed towards people by whoever's controlling them. What's reaching out for you is the shadow magician casting the spell. They aren't too far from here, either. They probably live in Domino City."

Seto had begun to sit up as Ryou spoke. He was leaning forward now, at last engaged in the conversation between them. His hands rested in the table, ready for something in line with some nebulous idea of taking action that had begun to form in his mind. There was the sensation of making progress here. He needed to go further. For a second, he allowed himself to feel like there just might be a chance.

"Can I find that person?" asked Seto. "Can I hunt them down? If they can assert some sort of power over me, can't I trace it back to the source? There's always a source. If they're here, in Domino City…."

"Maybe you can, but I don't know how," said Ryou. "The only spell you have is the one Mr. Isono is capable of performing. I'm not sure that's going to get you very far. The shadows will reach you when the shadow magician releases them. You can't tell when that'll happen. They increase as the spell grows stronger, but they aren't a great indicator of when it'll strike. I don't know how strength and time and ease of casting correlate. I have no practical experience with this stuff as like a thing someone could actually do."

"Maybe we'll find an answer here, then," said Seto. He opened his left hand to gesture to the house around them, but ended up hitting his empty cup. He caught the cup with his same hand before it tipped over. He swore at it under his breath. The assistant at the door glanced over at the noise, and Seto shook his head.

"I'm sorry I can't be of more help," said Ryou. "I wouldn't like to find out what's going to happen to the world if this spell is successful."

"I wouldn't like to find out what's going to happen even if it isn't. I might not be crazy now, but given time…well, crazy might be my only way out."

"I won't tell anyone about this," Ryou assured him with a kindness that Seto felt repulsed by.

"Who the hell would believe you? We won't leave any sign we were even here, remember?" said Seto. In the doorway, an assistant entered, apologizing profusely and handing over Seto's book. Seto accepted it with a hard glare and stern nod, snapping for the assistant to continue searching the house right away.

With his book returned to him, Seto leaned back and opened it, shutting Ryou off as he began to read. Ryou sighed and lay his head in his arms on the table, trapped and bored in his own living room while Mr. Isono's team continued to search.


	19. Chapter 19

With his hand curled into a knobby fist, Ryuuji nudged Yuugi awake. Yuugi was slow to stir, nothing in him programmed to wake immediately at the slightest provocation. Ryuuji envied such careless ease. He continued to dig his bony knuckles into the side of Yuugi's arm until Yuugi was forced to open his eyes. Yuugi woke up cross.

"What, Ryuuji?"

"Jounouchi's looking for you, and you aren't home. He actually called me. He never calls me, so, I guess it's important."

Yuugi groaned as he sat up, more asleep than awake but struggling to surface. He always slept more heavily on Ryuuji's couch than he did in his own apartment. His apartment buzzed with too much activity at the fringes of his consciousness. Sleeping there was like trying to take a restful nap on public transportation. It wasn't possible.

"Did he even say what it was about?" asked Yuugi. He yawned widely and missed Ryuuji's reply. "What?"

"Something about Ryou Bakura and you never answering your damn phones these days, and he's getting suspicious."

"Ryou Bakura? I haven't seen him in like two weeks. He's kind of a homebody, isn't he? Jounouchi can always swing by his house, honestly."

"He hasn't been home. Nor have you."

"Oh, yeah…."

Yuugi stood and went to check his appearance in the bathroom mirror. His hair was a bit disheveled, but otherwise he didn't look more than an average level of frumpy. Indeed, the less he tried with his appearance, the less people tended to recognize him in public. That was why having a dueling persona was so important. It was something he could put on and take off at will, like a costume worn on a stage.

"I'll go to the shop and see what Jounouchi wants," said Yuugi. Ryuuji was already sitting at the desk with his back turned. He waved a distracted goodbye and resumed his engrossing work assignment.

Jounouchi roll his eyes and berated Yuugi for his carelessness an hour later. Yuugi had lied and told him that he'd stopped at a hotel. A crowd of fans had recognized him on the street near his apartment, and he'd decided to wait them out in a hotel instead of leading them to his home where they could start standing vigils. Jounouchi had always suggested Yuugi wear hats for this exact reason. The hair was always the quickest tell, even if it was highly emulated the world over by his diehard fans.

"Did you want something, or were you just trying to beat out my mom's top spot on the list of people who constantly check in on me?" asked Yuugi. Shizuka laughed somewhere out of sight. Business was slow, and so the chatter from the storeroom drifted up to her at the counter.

"I just found it odd that you and Ryou both seemed to have gone missing. I get worried about you guys. Especially Ryou. He normally gets back to me within a day because he just sits around the house and never goes anywhere. He at least gets back to me when he checks his phone before bed."

"Maybe he's got a really engaging campaign going?"

"I thought so, so, I went over. He strikes me as the kind of guy who gets so involved in something he forgets to eat, so I was going to invite him to get dinner with me. If you go in person for that kind of stuff, it's way harder for people to think of a reason to turn you down."

"Wow, Jounouchi, your maternal instinct rivals most actual mothers."

"What you call a maternal instinct, I call giving a crap about my friends. And anyway, I was texting him about some kits that arrived, but he never got back to me. He's usually all about that shit. Two days later I texted him and all he responded was 'k'. That was it."

"But he responded."

"Yuugi, 'k' is the 'fuck you' of text messages. It literally means nothing."

"He's busy?"

"Doing what? He quit his job like three months ago and just hangs out as his dad's house doing whatever the fuck."

"Really? I didn't even know he had a job."

"He was a hotel receptionist? You don't remember? We went to see him at work like three times."

"Sorry, I've just been very busy these days. I've got a duel coming up with Seto Kaiba. I'm losing track of lots of stuff. Why are you so worried about Ryou, though? Maybe he got another job."

"He would've told me if he'd got another job."

"Maybe it's an illegal job."

" _Funny_. You and Shizuka need to hang out. She's been giving me a hard time, too. I'm serious, though. This is weird. And you disappearing, too, on top of everything. I'm just a bit wound up over all this stuff. It's weird. Something weird is going on."

Yuugi said nothing, thought he was acutely aware of just how weird things were getting and why. Jounouchi was probably feeling out of sorts because he'd visited Yuugi's apartment, and the shadows there had played tricks on him. He'd carried that uneasy feeling out with him and was now trying to find a source for it within the changes in his interpersonal relationships.

"I'm going to swing by Ryou's again today," said Jounouchi. "I want you to come with me. Shizuka, too. Ryuuji said he was busy, but Honda can drive us. What's the point of that new car of his if he keeps taking his bike everywhere? Clearly we need to make that purchase worth something."

"Sure," said Yuugi. There was no rule that he had to spend every day at Ryuuji's. He just liked it there because it was peaceful, and if Ryuuji needed anything he could help out. He collected fewer shadows to bring home the less he visited, but he couldn't help it.

Ryuuji had already told Yuugi that wanting to stay in the apartment was an effect of the shadow magic. As one of the growing spell's protagonists, he was always going to feel irrevocably drawn to the source of the magic. Frankly, it was supposed to keep him within the shadow magician's easy control should he suffer cold feet. That was somewhat ominous to hear, but Yuugi trusted Ryuuji had no evil intentions. Ryuuji hinted that such trust might be a side effect of the shadow magic, too.

"Fine, then come around when the shop's closed and we'll all go together," said Jounouchi. "Don't disappear on me. Or like, send a text if you need to cancel."

"Sure thing," said Yuugi. "Don't worry about it."


	20. Chapter 20

Ryou and Isono had spent hours watching the water that reflected Seto's aura to them. Seto had spent the entire time working on projects and hosting videoconferences with the heads of foreign branches of the company. Everyone always seemed a little disappointed when they connected to the call and noticed it was Seto and not Mokuba conducting the meeting. Seto pretended not to notice. He didn't have to pretend not to care.

The workday was nearing its end, as was Seto's patience with the two murmuring idiots in the corner of the room. They'd come to his office because it was the highest point in the building that wasn't the roof, and allowed them to orient themselves at the very heart of the city. This facilitated mapping where the shadow magician might be located based on the shadow magician's movements.

Isono's primary job was to hold the spell in place while Ryou traced the occasional movements on a piece of paper and compared them to a map of Domino City to see if the paths matched any notable segments of streets. Unfortunately, it was hard to get a fully accurate approximation of distance, as the movement across the water's surface was miniscule and difficult to simultaneously draw. Ryou and Isono had developed a loose sort of code where Isono would narrate the movements and count so as to give a rough idea of how long the magician headed in that particular direction. When the magician turned or veered off the line, Isono would estimate the degree of the turn with a pen and a clear protractor he held over the bowl.

Seto thought they both looked like idiots and highly doubted such an inconsistent method would reap any viable results. He put up with it, though. It wasn't like Seto had much of a choice.

"Is…is there a third point?" asked Isono uncertainly. Ryou automatically handed him a magnifying glass without waiting for Isono to ask. "I think there's a third point here."

Ryou pulled himself away from comparing drawings of erratic lines to the giant map that covered two thirds of the long coffee table they were sat alongside. He took the magnifying glass from Isono and peered through it to the spot Isono indicated.

"I didn't notice it before, but it's moving very quickly now, away from the shadow magician. The clouds around the shadow magician don't wander off like that. I think it's something else."

"It could be some smaller piece of the larger overall threat," speculated Ryou breathlessly, not wanting to disturb the water's surface as he leaned in closer. He'd already tied his hair back hours ago when it'd fallen into and disturbed the water of the spell. Apparently long hair wasn't overtly conducive to practicing magic. Merlin's beard was a lie.

"Do you think there might be a third person involved?" asked Isono. "Or is it some kind of servant created from the shadows?"

"Servants from the shadows are erratic and hard to control. Plus, they'd never be able to wander this far from their master. That's the problem with shadow magic, you see. You have to establish a bridge of connection between yourself and the target. Normally, this is just done by getting into close proximity before launching a spell at them. That's the easiest way."

"So you're saying this quick little dot is probably a person."

"Yeah."

"And how might they and the shadow magician be related?"

"I have no idea."

Seto harrumphed peevishly from his desk, hearing every word of the muttered conversation between the two magical amateurs that were his only hope. He didn't feel very secure in such hands, but unfortunately, those hands were all he had.

"If it's a person and moving quickly, they're probably in a vehicle," said Isono, ignoring Seto's unrepentant brattiness. "The shadow magician always stays in the middle of the city, either walking or taking some other form of transport. This third person is on the expressway. I think they're heading north."

Ryou pulled the map towards him once more, letting the southern half crinkle against his knees.

"They've been going for a while, so they must be nearing the edge of town. It's definitely the north. That expressway goes longer," said Isono.

"That's annoying. There're way more neighborhoods up there. That's where my house is."

"Okay, they're deviating. They're taking an exit. It's one of those ones that loops around. Now they're heading west, slower than before. West. West. West."

Ryou traced his finger further along with each repetition of the word "west". He'd found what he'd assumed ought to be the exit due to his familiarity with the area. When Isono directed him northwest by forty-five degrees, it was roughly in the same area as a large intersection Ryou passed through every day on his way home. Northwest was indeed one of the five directions it branched off in. He continued to trace along, picturing each street they passed as Isono continued to count the direction.

Three more turns and one long road later, the dot stopped moving. Isono glanced over and took up a pencil to draw a circle around the general area where Ryou's finger had stopped. Ryou, however, remained frozen.

"Is something the matter?" asked Isono, impatient to mark the area in case the dot moved on from there once more.

"I…" started Ryou, but stopped.

"What is it?"

Ryou took a deep breath and collected himself before revealing the unsettling truth.

"I…I uh…I think they're at my house," said Ryou quietly.

Finally feeling a sense of genuine interest in what the hell was going on, Seto looked up. He stared at Ryou. Ryou only stared at the tip of his own finger, hovering and beginning to tremble, over his address.


	21. Chapter 21

"He isn't here, what a surprise," said Shizuka, shivering and stamping her feet in the increasing chill as dusk fell. "That's what happens when you drop in on people unannounced, guys. You drive half an hour out to the middle of nowhere for nothing."

Yuugi, Jounouchi, and Honda were already searching the wall for some way over it and into the yard beyond. Shizuka rang the bell one more time, but the intercom didn't come to life.

"What if he's just asleep?" asked Honda. "He's probably keeping weird hours if he's working on some project. We should try to get in there."

"I agree," said Jounouchi. "We're not really breaking in if we're his friends checking in on him. If he gets mad and calls the police, he's not our friend anymore. Simple as that."

"Okay, but like, this wall's huge," said Yuugi, stepping back to look at it. He felt the approaching darkness of nightfall like a cold breeze carrying away the weight and humidity of a storm that brewed around him. The night didn't remove all the shadows that clung to him, but it did dilute them and make them easier to bear. Ryuuji had explained that this was the reason Ryuuji was currently more active at night than during the day.

"Honda and I'll hoist Shizuka over," said Jounouchi. "She lighter and more agile than any of us."

"How will she get back over?" asked Yuugi.

"I'll open the gate, dummy," said Shizuka, already taking off her coat and handing it to Honda so he could lay it over the bars at the top of wall.

"But…what if it needs a key?"

"That's not how gates work on the inside," said Shizuka. Honda and Jounouchi already had their hands woven together for her to place her foot. They counted to three, and then lifted her up. She disappeared over the top of the wall. There was a light thud as she touched down on the other side. Jounouchi and Yuugi turned to wait by the gate, which soon rattled open. Honda took down the coat and joined them, shaking loose and dirt and debris before handing it over to Shizuka once more.

"This kinda feels like trespassing," said Yuugi as they approached the unlit house. At that moment, a light above the door flickered to life as a sensor inside registered the late evening dark. Jounouchi tried the knob, but the door was locked. Shizuka joked they should go ahead and break a window for good measure. That'd teach Ryou to answer his damn phone next time Jounouchi called.

The four of them went around the house, searching for signs of life or a way inside. Neither of those things was evident. They reconvened at the front door.

"So, what now?" asked Shizuka, looking expectantly at Jounouchi, their fearless leader.

"Now we look for a spare key."

"What? It's nighttime. That'll take forever," said Honda. He crossed his arms and turned away.

"But there's four of us. We can cover a lot of ground and check the obvious places. I don't think Ryou is the kind of guy who has much imagination when it comes to home security. It's probably really obvious."

"We can barely see anything," said Shizuka. "And the neighbors will think it's suspicious that four random adults are searching Ryou's yard with the lights on their phones and whispering to each other."

"Then let's be quick about it," said Jounouchi. "I can't shake the feeling that something's up, okay? Ryou could be in danger. He could be dead."

"If he's dead, he's not in danger anymore, though, is he?" asked Honda, but sighed and crouched down to begin looking under the rocks leading along the path to the door. The rest began to search as well. For all his part in the complaining, Honda was the one who found the key velcroed to the bottom of an overhang. Jounouchi congratulated him on taking the order to be quick to heart. Honda told him to shut up.

The four entered the house, splitting up in the main hall to search every room. Yuugi went to the back of the house. He entered the far bedroom alone, and in passing through the doorway felt the unexpected sensation of every shadow clinging to him being sloughed off. He froze a moment, stunned by the slowly dawning realization that this room had a barrier around it to keep out the shadows.

For a moment, a small seed of doubt planted itself in Yuugi's mind. He wondered if Ryuuji's spell involved more than Yuugi and Seto. Had Ryou somehow been roped into it? Why hadn't Ryuuji told him? Was it a secret? But then, why'd Ryuuji not seemed concerned that Yuugi was going to Ryou's house?

Yuugi quickly took stock of the room. On its own, nothing stood out about it. It was a bedroom. There were a few books on a shelf above the bed. There was a desk against the wall beneath the window. A closet along the left wall held clothes and blankets and a chest of drawers with more clothes. Yuugi searched lightly through all of it, not wanting to make much noise. They were supposed to be looking for Ryou, not nosing though his stuff. Yuugi found nothing. He surveyed the room once more and wondered why this room was so special. What was it supposed to protect?

Or rather, who?

This was the first time Yuugi had experience magic he didn't know the precise source of. Who'd cast this spell? Where were they now? There was a possibility Ryuuji didn't know about other shadow magicians in Domino City. Those other shadow magicians might put up a fight. They wouldn't let Ryuuji change the world unchallenged. Just because Ryuuji was tired of Magic & Wizards did mean other shadow magicians were of the same mind.

Yuugi stepped out of the bedroom and went to rejoin his friends in the hall. No-one had found anything. The house was empty. Ryou wasn't home. Now the question was whether or not they ought to wait for him to return.

"C'mon, it'll freak him the fuck out if he shows up and we're here," said Honda. Shizuka agreed with him. Yuugi didn't say much.

"I want to have a talk with him. I want this settled," said Jounouchi stubbornly. "I didn't come all the way out here for more questions I can't answer. I say we wait."

"I have work in the morning, Jounouchi. Plus, I'm starving. We were supposed to get dinner," said Honda. "At least let's go eat. Then we can come back with some food and see if he's home. Tell him we were in the area and decided to bring him something."

"You're right," said Jounouchi, clutching his stomach, which had begun to rumble at the mention of food. "I'm kind of hungry, actually. Maybe we need a break to eat. It was a long drive out here."

"Then, let's go."

Honda replaced the spare key where he'd found it, and they left. Yuugi remained sullen throughout, lost in thought as his mind was overwhelmed with questions that were never answered, but just splintered off into more and more questions. Who was the shadow magician in that house? Had Ryou somehow learned shadow magic himself? Or did his father know it? How had Ryou come across the Sennen Ring years ago anyway? Had that been more than just chance? He'd said something about it coming from his father. Was that story true? Yuugi had had no reason to question it before, but now….

It seemed joining together to search for Ryou had put everyone into a nostalgic mood, and the decision to get hamburgers for dinner like they were teenagers again was unanimous. Instead of Anzu, it was Shizuka this time, but nothing else had changed. Shizuka recited a few of Anzu's favorite pieces of advice about friendship and hope, and they all laughed and agreed this was just as good as the actual thing. Yuugi perhaps agreed a little slower, and the joke soon ended in respect to his and Anzu's history. Jounouchi apologized with zero subtly, embarrassing everyone and saying that Anzu had been their friend for so long that he sometimes forgot what had happened between her and Yuugi in the more recent past.

In reality, Yuugi hadn't been hurt by the joke, not deeply. Yuugi liked to put the past behind him. Anzu was still their friend, and that would never change. He told Jounouchi this. What he didn't tell Jounouchi was that the thing that was really bothering Yuugi was the mysterious room in Ryou's house. He'd started calling it the magician's bedroom in the back of his mind. It was literally all the could think about.


	22. Chapter 22

Seto obviously hadn't come with them to Ryou's house, as Isono hadn't overlooked Ryou's comment about a spell being easier to cast if the shadow magician was in close proximity to their target. Isono and Ryou had raced downstairs together in a flash, Isono directing the driver already waiting for Seto at the curb to get out of the car. To Ryou's amazement, the driver had immediately done so without even asking why. Ryou took the front seat next to Isono on order to give him the quickest directions. They'd sped north at a breakneck pace, terrifying Ryou and making the usual half-hour trip in a little over fifteen minutes. They were now parked outside the DominiMart down the street from Ryou's house. Isono flipped on the maplight while Ryou knowingly filled a small, shallow bowl with water.

It turned out that the water couldn't sit still enough in the car anywhere they could easily read it. Ryou grumbled at it, still on edge from the drive over and the realization that the shadow magician might know where he lived. He got out of the car and led Isono to a small 24-hour café on the same shopping street as the DominiMart. They politely ordered the requisite coffees and selected a well-lit table. There, they tried the spell again.

Because Seto wasn't with them, Isono had needed to bring along a personal effect of Seto's. This effect was a Blue Eyes White Dragon card, one of the only possessions of Seto's strong enough to connect them to Seto's aura directly. Isono didn't need to remind Ryou that if anything happened to the card while they had it, they were fucking dead.

"It's gone," said Ryou with a disappoint sigh after he and Isono had spent a full ten minutes searching every part of the reflected image. "We're too late."

"Do you think it's safe to enter the house?" asked Isono. "Do you think this is related to Mr. Kaiba? It could be concealing itself. If it's after you, it might know we're on to it."

"I have no idea," said Ryou with a tired shrug. He picked up the coffee, which had gone quite cold, and took a sip. It tasted of nothing. Ryou felt nothing. He was too afraid to think straight or notice anything.

"It's possible this might be dangerous," said Isono as if Ryou didn't already know that. "I'll go ahead, and you can wait here. If I'm not back in an hour, don't look for me. Call Mr. Durazno."

"Who's that?"

"My lieutenant. He can get you in contact with Seto Kaiba. I've given you clearance to contact Mr. Kaiba directly in case of an emergency. The phone password is _melocotón_. Here's the number."

Isono copied the phone number onto the back of a business card and handed it to Ryou across the table. He also handed Ryou the case with the Blue Eyes White Dragon card inside of it. In exchange, Ryou handed Isono his house keys.

"I'll be back. You can have this coffee. I haven't touched it."

Ryou wasn't sure caffeine was what he needed more of in his agitated state, but a few minutes later, he took the coffee and began to drink it for lack to anything else to do. This had the exact result expected. He was soon a nervous wreck, jumping in alarm every time the door opened too loudly or a fellow café patron passed by too close to his table. Despite his racing heart, the minutes of the hour he counted passed with excruciating slowness. He focused all his attention on the watch in his hands, Isono's, and waited.


	23. Chapter 23

The idea was to head back to Ryou's with some food as an excuse to see if Ryou was home. They'd tell him the bare bones of the truth, that they'd come to invite him to dinner, he wasn't home, and so they'd gone without him and brought something back. The whole thing about breaking into his house to look for him they'd keep swept under the rug.

Honda, the one driving and thus more attuned to their surroundings, was the first to notice the man at the gate to Ryou's house. He pulled up quickly and parked, snapping a few times to get Jounouchi's attention because Jounouchi was falling asleep on Shizuka's shoulder. Yuugi, in the navigator's seat, was already watching as the mysterious man fumbled with his keys and dropped them.

"Maybe he's drunk and lost," said Jounouchi uncertainly as the man tried every key on the ring. The last key was successful and the gate opened. "Oh, nevermind, then."

Honda had already turned off the engine. The four of them sat silent in the car and watched, the only sound their collective breathing and the soft crumpling noises of the bag of burgers Jounouchi held close to his chest.

"Who is that?" asked Shizuka. "Is it Ryou's dad?"

"No," said Yuugi as the man disappeared behind the gate and shut it. "His dad's got long hair."

"Then who the hell is it?" asked Jounouchi. He lowered the bag of burgers, and the sound was almost deafening in the stillness of the car interior.

"He knew to shut the gate behind him. It doesn't automatically close behind you," said Shizuka. "It doesn't look like it's the first time he's been here."

"Well duh, Shizuka. He's got keys," said Jounouchi.

"Those are Ryou's keys," said Honda. Yuugi and Jounouchi both looked over in alarm. Shizuka inhaled sharply, her eyes never leaving the gate.

"How? Are you sure?" asked Jounouchi in a voice that sounded angry in order to mask his concern and fear.

"There's that dice pendant on them. The keychain with like the five different kinds of dice on it. I saw it when the guy dropped the keys."

"Well, Ryou's dead, isn't he?" said Shizuka. Jounouchi shoved her in the shoulder and told her not to say something so stupid. She punched him back much harder with no other rebuttal. Jounouchi yelped in surprise and rubbed where she'd hit him.

"To be fair, Jounouchi, you're the one who keeps telling us you think something's wrong," said Honda.

"Watch it, man. I punch a lot harder than my sister," said Jounouchi. He raised a threatening fist as he spoke. Yuugi interceded.

"Hey! What are we going to do, guys? Should we like, go ring the doorbell?"

"I'll do it," said Honda, reaching back to take the bag of burgers from Jounouchi. Jounouchi let it go before realizing what Honda was saying, but Shizuka held him back when he attempted to race out of the car ahead of Honda.

Honda stepped out of the car and tossed the keys to Yuugi "just in case". He shut the door behind him before striding out to the gate of Ryou's house. Yuugi, whose window was lowered by a small amount, leaned towards the opening to listen. Jounouchi and Shizuka did the same. Honda rang the bell, and they heard it sound faintly inside the house.

"I'm sorry I said Ryou was dead," whispered Shizuka. "I hope Honda's safe."

A light came on inside the house. There was the muffled sound of a distorted voice over the intercom. Honda's softer, less artificially amplified voice, responded. No-one in the car could make out a word. A moment later, there was the sound of the front door being opened, and the man none of them knew was soon standing at the gate talking to Honda. Honda held up the bag of burgers, explaining his purpose. He gestured to his car, letting the man know he wasn't alone. The man looked at the car, but clearly couldn't discern any of the faces of the young adults inside. He shrugged at Honda and pointed down the road, giving directions. A moment later he went back inside and Honda came back to the car.

"Ryou's at a café down the street near the DominiMart," said Honda, handing the bag of burgers to Yuugi and buckling up. He started the car and pulled out before continuing. "The guy said his name's Fugata, and he's a friend of Ryou's dad. Said he's using the spare bedroom while he's in town visiting. He and Ryou were out for a walk around the neighborhood. Ryou stayed back and let him borrow the keys to get in."

"Well, I guess that makes way more sense than Ryou being murdered," mused Shizuka. Jounouchi rolled his eyes.

"I vote we go see what Ryou's up to in the café," said Honda. "I mean, we've spent like half the damn evening out here, might as well say hi."

"Sure," said Jounouchi. Yuugi nodded along distractedly. As they drove away from the house, he glanced back. He wondered who Fugata was. He had a feeling he knew which bedroom the man might be staying in.

The question was, did Ryou know he was living under the same roof as a powerful shadow magician?


	24. Chapter 24

_"Friends are coming your way. I'm Fugata, your dad's friend. Hide everything."_

Ryou sprang into action. He pulled his coat on and slipped the case with the Blue Eyes White Dragon into an inside pocket. He didn't trust to leave the coat hanging off the back of his seat when it held someone so precious. Once the card and the watch were away, he stood. He bent forward to take the small bowl of water and ink next, but paused as the image on the surface caught his eye.

The dot was back, though it was so faint it was nearly invisible. Also, it was moving. In relation to the point that indicated the Blue Eyes White Dragon card in Ryou's pocket, it was incredibly close.

Ryou looked up, half expecting to seen a demonic creature passing by the coffee shop window, crossing the street, making some kind of painfully obvious scene. He had to remind himself that the thing was supposed to be human, not a monster. But, that thought was even more terrifying. A monster he could see and escape, but humans were everywhere.

A car pulled up to the parking lot of the DominiMart down the road. Ryou saw, unhappily, that the dot had also stopped.

Whoever it was, Ryou had a feeling they were in that car.

Was it coming for him, Ryou asked himself? Had it missed him at his house and come here to find him? ...Should he run?

Ryou didn't know how much of the trembling in his chest was the caffeine anxiety, and how much was legitimate fear. The door to the café opened, and a cold wind blew in. It made the hair on his arms stand on end. Although, that might've been the fear, too.

At the same time, the car door opened.

Ryou recognized them all by their hair long before he saw their faces. Hiroto Honda stepped out of the driver's side. Yuugi Mutou emerged from the passenger side. Katsuya Jounouchi and his sister Shizuka stumbled much slower from the back. The dot in the bowl began to shift again, but in a quivering, almost invisible way that signified it was crossing a short distance Ryou would need magnification to see.

Ryou dumped the contents of the small, shallow bowl into Isono's empty coffee cup and threw both the sealed cup and the bowl away. He sat down and pretended to be reading his phone while he deleted Isono's text. A moment later, his friends arrived.


	25. Chapter 25

"Jounouchi is stupid enough to get used by a magician. I vote Jounouchi."

Ryou sighed and slumped forward in his seat on the opposite end of the sofa from Isono. Behind them, before them, and all around them, Seto paced in agitation. He'd been sitting placidly in the corner armchair when Ryou and Isono had entered his study, but had shot to his feet at the news they'd come bearing. Isono had suggested Ryou sit down, as Seto was prone to continue as he was now for quite a while.

"Please be serious," said Ryou. "The one working with the shadow magician could just as easily be Honda or even Yuugi. It could be Shizuka."

"You're on to something, there, Ryou," said Seto. He let out a sharp laugh like a bark. "Honda's equally if not more stupid than Jounouchi. That definitely confuses things. But which one is the one exactly stupid enough to work with a magician to threaten the world?"

"I really doubt it's a question of stupidity."

"That's because you're as much an idiot as your stupid friends are."

They'd come full circle again, back around to petty insults intended to take down the messenger within Seto's easy reach. Ryou gave up and turned to Isono, who mouthed a silent apology. He'd warned Ryou that Seto wouldn't take any of this well and to be prepared for Seto's foul mood. It felt very close to betrayal for Seto, knowing that that one of Yuugi's useless friends was trying to kill him, or drive him crazy, or whatever the hell it was they were doing. Seto was angry, and an angry Seto lashed out.

"We need to make a strategy, Mr. Kaiba," said Isono. "We need to figure out how this changes the level of the threat to you."

"Can't we just arrest them all and ship them off somewhere? Doesn't the company have facilities for that kind of thing?"

"Hey now," said Ryou.

"You dismantled the infrastructure supporting such facilities when you took over the company, sir. Such measures against corporate espionage haven't been taken in over a decade."

"Damn," said Seto with a twinge of regret. "Perhaps I was too hasty about that."

"I'm fairly certain Yuugi Mutou is not so easily disposed of anyway, Mr. Kaiba. He bears certain significance as a celebrity. His disappearance would be noted by the press."

"You have a point, Mr. Isono. I'll admit that," said Seto. He was pacing the floor between the sofa and the television now, in full view of his two-man audience. "But accidents happen all the time. Maybe we can hire some people—"

"You're not going to hurt my friends," said Ryou. "I've saved them once from evil and shadow magic. I will protect them from you."

Seto stopped his pacing and looked at Isono inquiringly. He pointed to Ryou, feigning obliviousness to Ryou's insolent glare. "Why the hell is Ryou Bakura even in my house, Mr. Isono? Do you both come in a pair now? I don't understand why two people were necessary to deliver this information when just one of you would've sufficed." He shot a hard look at Ryou. "Preferably the one of you actively in my employ and not the hanger-on."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Kaiba. It's just that he personally knows our suspects, and also a bit about shadow magic, so, I thought he might have some valuable input on our discussion."

"Ah yes, hearing him constantly complain is extremely helpful, Mr. Isono. If I feel the need to punch someone in the face on behalf of his idiot friends, he'll make an excellent candidate."

"Duly noted, sir. This is the last time I'll bring him."

"It better be, or I'll make sure it is myself."

The expression on Seto's face when he looked at Ryou again was darkly ominous. Ryou found he was suddenly exceedingly sympathetic to whoever it was in his group of friends that thought wrecking Seto Kaiba with shadow magic was a terrific idea. The only problem was that the whole world had to suffer for it, too.

"Let's think how this new information affects our approach," said Isono. "For one, we now have four potential suspects attached in some way to the shadow magician. Basically, we have a lead. How can we trace it back to the shadow magician?"

"Kidnap them and interrogate them."

Ryou sighed but held his tongue.

"We can't legally do that. Not because it's generally illegal everywhere, but actually because there's a stipulation in Yuugi Mutou's contract that his friends and family cannot be kidnapped by KaibaCorp. It's intended to prevent the company from using his loved ones as a form of leverage over him. In the event that such a thing happens, he's entitled to 30% of the company assets."

"I fucking signed off on that?"

"I believe it made sense at the time. You see, Master Mokuba had just—"

"Nevermind. I get it. What are our other options?"

"Surveillance. Check for suspicious activity. Observe your aura around the clock and compare it with data collected in the field. In a few days or a week, we ought to have it narrowed down, given the person makes considerable, trackable movements in that time."

"And then what? We can't kidnap them."

"We focus surveillance on that particular person and wait for them to lead us to the shadow magician."

"How long will that take?"

"It really depends on a lot of factors. It could take no time, or it could take months. But," here Isono hesitated. He set his face into an impassive mask before he continued, "I would highly suggest in the meantime that you cancel your upcoming charity duel with Yuugi Mutou."

Seto needed to sit down for this. He collapsed onto the sofa between Ryou and Isono, throwing his head back and staring at the ceiling, devastated and unreachable. He was physically worn out after an hour of sustained pacing and yelling at his interlocutors. Even Seto's unrestrained fury had its human limits. His breath had already shortened, though he fought against showing it.

Ryou, next to Seto, made a very obvious point of scooting away with a small sound of disgust at both how sweaty Seto was, and also in summation of Ryou's growing negative opinion of Seto as a person. Seto flipped him off without looking over.

"What do you mean cancel the duel?" asked Seto, making sure he'd heard that right. He shut his eyes to better process what it was Isono was telling him as Isono began to explain.

"Participating in a duel, sir, any public duel, puts you at considerable risk. It'd be an easy matter for the shadow magician to buy a ticket and get near enough to you to cast a spell. Perhaps the magician is waiting for just such an event to make a move? Plus, Yuugi's friends are likely to attend, and whatever function one of them serves is bound to take affect around you. Too many dangerous elements have the potential to converge."

"Limit the audience, then. Televise it instead. I'm not canceling the duel."

"There's still no guarantee that the magician won't infiltrate the camera crew. And also, you know Yuugi's friends always find a way to get into every duel in which Yuugi participates. It'll be impossible to keep them out."

Seto clasped his hands and brought his head forward, still not opening his eyes. He let out a heavy sigh. Ryou was amazed to realize that Seto was seriously considering whether or not a duel was worth whatever shadow spell was coming for him. Like it was an actual decision he was permitted to make. Like he just might go through with the duel anyway because dueling Yuugi was infinitely more important than the fate of the entire world.

"I'll consider it," said Seto, though it sounded as if he were already done considering it. It sounded as if the duel would still go on.

Ryou now seriously began to think about how best to spend his last days before Seto Kaiba willingly allowed shadow magic to destroy the damn world.


	26. Chapter 26

"There's a shadow magician in Ryou Bakura's house."

Yuugi hadn't waited for the next day to come running to Ryuuji Otogi's apartment. Ryuuji was awake, naturally, but still surprised Yuugi had come over so late (or early, rather) and so unannounced. He almost hadn't let him in. The second Yuugi mentioned another shadow magician, however, Ryuuji pulled Yuugi the rest of the way inside and shut the door.

"How do you know?"

"We-we went into his house when, uh, when he wasn't home, like to, to look for him," said Yuugi quickly and tripping over the words in his bewilderment. "I went in the room. The room that was protected. A shadow barrier, like here. Like at the shop."

Ryuuji ran a hand through his long, loose hair and turned away from Yuugi, thinking heavily he digested this new development. Theoretically, yes, he'd known there might be other shadow magicians about. Hell, it'd even occurred to him that there might be one in Domino City, as shadow magic was so closely tied to games. The real problem was that he'd run into Ryou Bakura a few days ago at KaibaCorp headquarters. He hadn't thought much of it. Ryou had said that he was there on behalf of his father, and Ryuuji had assumed it'd been something to do with the Domino City Museum. Mokuba Kaiba was on the board of trustees there and everything. Something like that didn't merit much further explanation.

"Is everything okay?" asked Yuugi as Ryuuji took a seat. Ryuuji was pale. Yuugi couldn't tell if it was because Ryuuji was afraid, or because he wasn't wearing any makeup. The green of his eyes didn't flash so dramatically when he didn't outline them. It was harder to read his emotions without the hard black line drawn in place, giving even the slightest flicker of movement away.

"I'm beginning to think you were right to wonder if Kaiba knows about shadow magic. _Shit_."

"Wait. How is this connected to Kaiba?"

"I'll tell you in a sec. But first, tell me everything you know about the supposed shadow magician in Ryou's house."

Yuugi sat down. He concealed his concern much better this time as he told Ryuuji what had happened down to the last detail. Ryuuji's fearfulness unnerved Yuugi. For the first time, Yuugi began to consider the prospect that their plan might fail, and that there might be real consequences to be suffered for it when it did.

Later in the morning, as the sun began to rise unseen beyond the blind-covered windows, Yuugi receive the text message that his duel with Seto would be canceled. Ryuuji took this a sure sign that Seto Kaiba now knew something of the nature of what was coming for him. Ryuuji went to pack a bag.


	27. Chapter 27

The dynamic duo with only a single spell between them were at it again, Isono leaning over a wide bowl, rapt and on edge, ready to narrate any movement he saw while Ryou hastily scribbled lines over slips of paper. They were working alone in a conference room today, as Seto was unwilling to put up with either of them after they'd finally managed to cajole him into canceling his match with Yuugi Mutou. The greater good had been served in the act, and Seto knew this despite his protests, but it still didn't mean he wasn't angry for having been made to do it. Ryou and Isono had been banish from his sight and allowed only to speak to him when they either had results, or a damn good reason otherwise.

Ryou, for one, preferred the conference room. The table was bigger, which meant he had more room to spread out the map. The only problem was that the dot wasn't moving much today. It was so near the magician it was nearly impossible to see. They were probably together, or at least in very close proximity. Perhaps today was some sort of coordination day, and they were busy plotting their next move.

If the dot didn't move by lunchtime, Ryou was going to call each of his friends under the pretense of apologizing to them for disappearing, as well as for not being home when they'd come over to invite him to dinner. He'd already sort of apologized the night before, but he hadn't stressed it. He hadn't said much at all, really, horrified as he was looking between the faces of the people he cared about most and wondering which one had it in them to threaten the entire world. He'd half lied and blamed the coffee when they'd asked him if he was okay.

"Well, this is fairly boring after all the excitement of last night," said Ryou, rocking a pencil back and forth between his fingers so fast its afterimage appeared shaped like an hourglass.

"I've had duller, more uncomfortable stakeouts than this," said Isono. "At least we can sit down indoors and take it relatively easy. A lot of security work is like this. You wait around getting ready for something to happen, and sometimes nothing really does. Not for a long, long while."

Ryou covered a large yawn and nodded. Convincing Seto to cancel the duel had taken hours, meaning they hadn't got much sleep. Finally, Ryou had threatened to tell Mokuba everything that was going on and have Mokuba cancel the duel for Seto. This was ultimately what had forced Seto to concede. He fucking hated Ryou for it, too, and made it perfectly clear that he blamed Ryou more than Isono for the duel being called off.

As the morning dragged on towards afternoon, Isono's phone rang. He answered it, never looking away from the surface of the bowl. When the call ended, he told Ryou what it had been.

"Yuugi, Jounouchi, and Shizuka are at the Mutou's game shop. Honda's at work," said Isono. "The theory right now is that it's Honda, because the shop he works in is at the bottom floor of an apartment building. The magician might live in one of those apartments. No-one lives above Kame Game these days."

Ryou thought about the fact that the person working with the magician might be Honda. It was hard to decide if that was a surprise. The greatest surprised had been finding out one of his friends was working with shadow magic at all. Figuring out exactly who didn't really add to it much.

"Maybe we can confirm it directly today?" asked Ryou after a moment. "Maybe I can call him and invite him to get lunch with me across town?"

"He might not have a long enough break for lunch. My data on him says he only takes a half hour and doesn't leave the building."

"Maybe after work. I can tell him I forgot my wallet at home and need a lift to my house because my metro card is expired?"

"He'll believe that?"

"Totally. And it'll get him to move enough that you can obviously see it."

Isono tapped his ever-present sunglasses on the table as he thought it over. He hadn't been wearing the glasses or his full suit when he and Ryou had gone to Ryou's house, and Ryou credited this as being the only reason his friends hadn't recognized him. Out of uniform, there was nothing remotely remarkable about the man. Ryou supposed it might be intentional and had something to do with maintaining a low profile as Seto Kaiba's personal assistant, head of security, and veritable right-hand man. Nothing about someone so close to real power should ever stand out.

"The question is," said Isono as he set the glasses to rest on the table, "who's going to track the movement? Who is going to double check the findings?"

"What?"

"I need someone here reading the map. I know you might think that sounds ridiculous, but trust me, you don't want to put the wrong person in Mr. Kaiba's sights as his designated enemy."

Ryou believed such a thing went without saying. "The movement would be so obvious you'd see it immediately."

"No, stop and really listen to me on this. We have to be 100-percent sure before we tell Mr. Kaiba anything. I can see in your eagerness to act that you clearly aren't thinking what happens next, after we figure out who's helping the shadow magician. If we're right and it's your friend Hiroto Honda…you need to remember how largely insignificant he is in terms of public interest for his well-being."

Ryou felt the last words more than he heard them. He grew still, openly frowning at Isono as he spoke. "I've told Kaiba he's not going to hurt my friends."

"But if one of your friends is trying to hurt Mr. Kaiba?" asked Isono. He glanced over at Ryou, peeling his eyes away from the bowl of water for mere milliseconds to emphasize his point. Quickly, he focused his gaze back down again, back to business.

"You need to consider what side you're on," said Isono gently, though Ryou wasn't sure if it was due to concern for Ryou, or concern for not disturbing the surface of the water. "You need to know that, and you need to choose now, before you take another step. Because, if you end up defending the person we catch just because you're friends with them, Mr. Kaiba is going to treat you no differently than he'd treat that person. You already lost what little you had of Mr. Kaiba's trust last night when you spoke up for all of your friends so directly."

"He was talking about kidnapping them. All of them. About locking them up somewhere and interrogating them. He was implying that he ought to just 'make them disappear' in the worst possible way."

"You were tactless. I always tell my subordinates that you simply _do not_ get between Mr. Kaiba and his enemy. After he's had his say and expressed his… _displeasure_ …."

"You mean once he's had his fit?"

"After that, you can talk reason to him. But never, ever, under any circumstances, imply a threat to him. Advise him, but don't assert power over him. He's very attuned to shifts in power dynamics, and he'll despise you for overstepping your bounds."

"I'm not his employee. I'm not a part of his hierarchy. I'll imply however many threats I want if he's suggesting hurting my friends."

"But one of your friends is going to get hurt, Mr. Bakura. At least one for sure. If they're helping the shadow magician, it's practically a guarantee. You need to accept that, or you need to step back and stay out of Mr. Kaiba's, and _my_ , way."

In that moment, with Isono's reminder of the stakes and the measures Seto would undoubtedly take to defend himself, Ryou felt every hour he hadn't slept the night before crash down on top of him. He was too tired for this, for any of it. What Isono said was right. One of his friends was culpable of assisting a shadow magician in threatening both Seto Kaiba and the world, and that person wasn't going to be let off easy once Seto and Isono caught them.

"I'm…I'm going to go home," said Ryou faintly in a voice not totally connected to the present moment. "I need to sleep. I haven't slept all night."

"You probably need a break and some time to think things over," said Isono in agreement. "You know how to reach me when you've made up your mind. If I don't hear from you, I'll just assume you're staying out of this."

"And then you'll put surveillance on me to make sure I don't switch sides."

Isono chuckled. "You assume you're not already being watched?"

"I guess that would make sense after finding out my friends are involved," said Ryou. He answered Isono's chuckle with a rueful smile.

"No, I've had people following you since I found out you knew anything at all about shadow magic."

"Oh."

"It hasn't been totally necessary, though, as you've spent most of your time helping me track the shadow magician. I'm sure if it hadn't been one of your friends involved, I'd have trusted your intentions until the end. Mr. Kaiba would've trusted you, too, in a way."

"I understand," said Ryou. He stood from his chair then and politely took his leave of Isono. He headed downstairs, for all appearances alone but certain he was already being followed even as he exited through the main doors of the building facing out to KaibaCorp Plaza. He had no idea what he ought to do, where he ought to go, or if there was anyone left in the world he could talk to. All he knew was that he was damn tired.


	28. Chapter 28

It'd occurred to Ryou on his way to the train station that actually, there was someone he could talk to. He was exhausted and desperately needing of sleep, but it was a long ride home on public transport. He didn't feel like going all the way home to sleep for a few hours, only to travel all the way back into the city right afterwards to try to meet up with Ryuuji Otogi. Instead, he would just go to Ryuuji's himself now. From what he remembered, Ryuuji had a very large and comfortable sofa, and he wouldn't mind terribly if Ryou needed to catch some sleep there for a few hours.

Ryou knew Ryuuji's address, but was sworn to secrecy against revealing it to anyone who might do the exact thing Ryuuji hated and which Ryou intend to do now; drop by unannounced. Ryou was much too polite to ever show up anywhere without an invitation, so Ryuuji had thought nothing of inviting Ryou over to help him go over new game designs. He commended Ryou constantly for being one of the true, pure game enthusiasts left in Domino City, as Ryou managed to passionately enjoy nearly every game he played without selling his soul to any of them. He even had a fairly powerful Magic & Wizards deck, despite not devoting himself to it with the single-minded obsession so prevalent in Domino. The deck had even been tested in battle, proving its effectiveness, while also being united in one of the most consistent occult themes Ryuuji had ever seen someone pull off without also sacrificing quality. Ryuuji had tried to convince Ryou to play competitively, just to see how far he could go, but Ryou had said no. Ryou just wanted to play for fun with his friends and nothing more.

The walk to Ryuuji's apartment from KaibaCorp was long, but Ryou needed plenty of time to think. He though about how much he ought to reveal to Ryuuji. After ten minutes deliberating with himself, he decided he would tell Ryuuji everything. Ryou's impetuous promise to Seto to not to tell anyone about Seto's situation no longer held if Seto was threatening his friends. Ryou didn't owe Seto that. Seto had done nothing whatsoever to gain Ryou's considerate silence and discretion in the first place.

The only question was if Ryuuji would believe the story. Ryou couldn't work any magic. Isono himself had only convinced Ryou that shadow magic was workable after doing the spell with the bowl of water and ink. There was nothing Ryou had that could convince Ryuuji but Ryou's own word. Then, it was up to Ryuuji to have an open mind.

Ryou arrived at the apartment building where Ryuuji Otogi lived. He reached for his phone and held it up. He ought to call at least before ringing the intercom. It was possible Ryuuji might refuse to buzz him into the building in protest and complain that Ryou should've told him he was stopping by beforehand.

As Ryou stood there looking at his phone and deliberating, a man and a child opened the door to the lobby and stepped out. They saw Ryou and held the door open for him, assuming Ryou was going inside. Ryou hurried over and thanked them politely. He then entered the building and headed up in the elevator to Ryuuji's apartment. He dialed Ryuuji's number as he went, hating to be rude and regretting that he hadn't thought to call on the walk over.


	29. Chapter 29

"Should we talk to Ryou? See what he knows about this Fugata guy?" asked Yuugi as he handed Ryuuji a clean set of sheets to spread over his grandpa's bed and replace the ones Ryuuji had been using to nap all day. "We can invite him over to play games. There's that game with the haunted house and the different sorts of mysteries you have to solve. That's probably something he'd come over to play."

Ryuuji was packing his bag and didn't accept the sheets. Yuugi went to put them on the bed himself, rolling his eyes at Ryuuji's laziness.

"Do you really think they can track you?" asked Yuugi. He'd been coming upstairs sporadically to talk shop and shadow magic with Ryuuji while trying not to raise much suspicion in Jounouchi and Shizuka who didn't know Ryuuji was there. Ryuuji had spent the day sleeping and working in Yuugi's grandpa's old bedroom, the best-protected area of the entire house. "Is hanging out here really going to throw them off if they can?"

"I have to stay in one place and only move at times when it's normal for people to move around. They can't tell who I am, but they can see when I travel nearer and further from Seto Kaiba. It's one of the hiccups of a spell strong enough to change the world. It's not exactly inconspicuous if you know how to look for such things."

"You didn't seem worried before."

"I didn't think Seto Kaiba was in contact with any shadow magicians before."

"I think the shadow magician probably reached out the Kaiba. They probably saw what we were doing, and realized Seto was the most likely target."

"I know. I should've listened when you said you were worried about something like that happening. I got too accustomed to being the only one who can use shadow magic anymore in this city. I've tried to find other magicians before, to find someone to work with. There wasn't anyone. Or, they were hidden too well for me to find them."

"And how are you sure they don't know who you are already?"

Ryuuji closed his bag and stood. "I don't know that entirely," he admitted. "But the normal method isn't very precise. You have to read the energy of someone involved in the spell. As this spell is going to change the world itself, everyone is a little bit involved. But, you and Kaiba are at the very center, so you both have the strongest connection to me."

Ryuuji motioned for Yuugi to follow him into the kitchen, stopping in the bathroom on the way to take a small mirror Grandpa had used for shaving. He placed the mirror flat on the kitchen counter and covered the reflective surface with a thin sheet of water from the sink. He told Yuugi not to breathe too hard or disturb the surface in any way, as the water tension wasn't incredibly stable. If the water were jostled the image would collapse, pour over the edges of the mirrored glass, and be lost.

Ryuuji then added a few drops of black vinegar he found in the cabinets. After a moment, he called Yuugi forward to look into the water, pointing to a dark clouded point, a smaller point almost imperceptibly close alongside it, and, further off, another point that the clouds around the first point seemed to reach for.

"That's more or less how it would look," said Ryuuji after a pause. His breath hit the surface, and the images were blurred and erased, leaving a mess of water and vinegar over the mirror. "It's not totally accurate. Plus, I probably look way more ominous and threatening on their end, seeing how Seto Kaiba is facing an attack. This is my aura, reflected at me in the mirror, so it's more restrained."

"And they can see me, too?"

"Yes. But they have no way of knowing who we are exactly. They can see if we move around, but you can't exactly zoom in or zoom out, so they can only guess where we are if we don't travel far. They definitely know we're in the city. It'd be very difficult to orient themselves and figure out exactly where."

"But they _could_?"

"KaibaCorp headquarters is in the heart of Domino. It might be possible. I was supposed to have a meeting there tomorrow, but I've cancelled it. We can never tell when they might be watching. By the way, what time do Jounouchi and Shizuka leave the shop?"

"In about an hour. Once they're done with closing."

"You go with them. I'll leave after. I don't want to run the risk of running into one of your stalker fans always lurking around this place."

"Sure," said Yuugi. "Should I come by your place later?"

"No, I might move around a bit more, collect a few of the last things I need. Kaiba cancelled the duel with you, so I need to find some way to cast the spell from a distance. He's not going to want to duel you with anyone else around."

"How? I thought you said you had to make a bridge. That you didn't have anything strong enough to do that."

"Yeah…"

Ryuuji sighed and looked out the window, fixing his gaze on a billboard in the distance that featured the KaibaCorp logo, as though a company as gigantic and powerful as KaibaCorp needed any advertising. If anything, all the billboard proclaimed was the company's inescapable presence, interwoven as it was into the very lives of every citizen of their city. It was only a matter of time, it seemed, before they'd stop calling it Domino City and name the place something stupid, like KaibaTown.

"I have to do a stupid and dangerous thing, Yuugi."

"What is it?"

Ryuuji looked away from the billboard and directly into Yuugi's eyes.

"I have to kidnap Mokuba Kaiba."


	30. Chapter 30

Ryou waited a good hour and a half in the hall outside Ryuuji Otogi's apartment. He'd tried to call after the first half hour, but Ryuuji hadn't answered. He thought he'd heard the cell ringing inside the apartment, which gave him hope that Ryuuji might just be spending a lazy day in bed. He'd called twice more since then and had waited another hour, but Ryuuji never showed.

"You're still here?" asked a woman down the hall. She'd left to buy groceries and come back in the time Ryou had been waiting. Ryou looked over from his seat on the floor with his coat folded over his left arm. He smiled to her and shook his head.

"He doesn't usually keep his visitors waiting," said the woman. "It's likely he isn't home right now."

"Yeah, usually I call before I arrive," said Ryou. He stretched and slowly rose to his feet with a weary groan. "I really wanted to talk to him about something, but it was kind of last minute. It's what I deserve, I guess. I should've called ahead."

"I'm sorry," said the woman with a sympathetic nod. "I hope you get in touch with him soon," she added before opening the door to her apartment. "Good luck."

Ryou thanked the woman and slipped his coat back on. He was too tired to wait much longer, and the fact that he'd skipped lunch wore him down even more. He decided he wouldn't take the train back home, but would spring for a quicker taxi. Until he got some rest and something to eat, he wouldn't be able to think straight and figure out what he was going to do about…everything, basically.

Ryou knocked one final time at the door. He dialed Ryuuji's number and waited for the call to go to voicemail. He sent his fifth overly needy and desperate text message in a row asking where Ryuuji was and what he was doing today.

There was still no response, so, Ryou left for home.


	31. Chapter 31

The first thing Ryou did when he got home was eat. Then, he went to the home library that had once been his childhood bedroom and fell asleep on the daybed for six whole hours. What woke him up later in the evening was the ringing of the buzzer at the front gate. It shocked him nearly out of his skin, as always happened whenever anyone came over. He didn't have time to yawn or stretch, but staggered tiredly to the hall and answered the intercom there.

"H-hello?" Ryou asked groggily. "Who is it?"

"Hi, Ryou! It's Yuugi."

"Ah, well, come in," said Ryou. He pressed the button to open the gate and then went to unlock the front door. A moment later, Yuugi was standing in Ryou's kitchen, looking around curiously as he tried to think of what to say.

"Were you asleep?" asked Yuugi after getting a good look at Ryou's face. "You look like you just woke up."

"The coffee kept me up late," said Ryou in a quick and easy lie. "I read most of the morning and lost track of time."

"What were you reading?" asked Yuugi. He took a seat at the small kitchen table at Ryou's unspoken insistence.

"A book about dragons," said Ryou in another lie.

Ryou set out some cups for tea and filled a kettle with water to put on the stove. Yuugi picked up the cup nearest to him and rolled it between his hands as he watched Ryou search for boxes of tea in the cabinets. A small selection of different teas began to grow in the middle of the table, and Ryou told Yuugi to choose whatever he wanted. Ryou then went to stand over the kettle and wait for the water to boil.

"Where's your roommate?" asked Yuugi. "Is he home?"

"My what?"

"Your dad's friend? Fugata?"

"Oh. I don't know. He…comes and goes. He hasn't been here long, so I don't really know his schedule."

"Had you ever met the guy before now? Like, did your dad ever introduce him to you?"

"No. My dad's been all over the world, so sometimes people just show up, and my dad's like 'hey, this is my friend so-and-so who I haven't seen in five years!' and I just sort of accept it's as he says."

"It's not weird? Sharing the house with some old guy you don't even know?"

"I dunno. Like I said, he's not around much. He doesn't really leave his room a lot when he's here, either."

None of Ryou's lies so far were improvised. Isono had given these stories to Ryou in order to look more believable in case anyone asked too many questions about Mr. Fugata. Ryou was to make it perfectly clear that Mr. Fugata's business was Ryou's dad's business, and nothing else.

"How long'll that guy be in town?"

"He didn't say. My dad said he'll have some business here for a while, and then he'll leave when it's done. I haven't asked much. It's rude to pry."

"True," said Yuugi as the kettle began to whistle lightly. Ryou waited a little more and then removed it from the heat. Yuugi held out his cup, and Ryou filled it. "It's all kind of mysterious, though. All of this."

"I guess," said Ryou. His phone rang in the other room and he went to get it from his coat pocket where he'd forgot it. To his surprise, the person calling was Isono. Speak of the devil. Ryou almost didn't answer it. His politeness overruled him.

"I know that I gave you a bit of a hard time this morning, but I just had to make sure you were dependable," said Isono after Ryou's reluctant greeting. "I see now that you intend to help Mr. Kaiba and me. I want to say I'm glad you've made that choice."

"Uhm, what?" asked Ryou. He was pretty awake now, which meant he'd probably heard Isono right. He had trouble figuring out what all Isono had said was supposed to mean, though. "What are you talking about?"

"You went ahead and invited Hiroto Honda to your house anyway. Honestly, you should've called me and told me so I could've taken note of it. I had to take a break for a few hours to rest my eyes, but I came back just in time to see him stopping in the general area you said your house was in. Maybe think ahead a little more in the future. I'm not psychic, and I'm not superhuman. I can't stare at this bowl all day."

Ryou clutched the phone tighter and moved away from the doorway leading into the kitchen. "Wait," he said in a hushed voice. "Do you mean _they're here_?"

"Who?"

" _Them_ , the person, the one we saw. They're… _here_? Now?"

"Well, I mean, I didn't track the route they took turn for turn, but it's around your area. Why? Are you alone? Do I need to send someone out there? Do you think you might be in danger?"

"No, no, it's just…" Ryou glanced toward the stream of light that crossed the hall and cast a yellow rectangle on the opposite wall. He imagined Yuugi in the kitchen. He listened a moment to Yuugi opening difference boxes of tea and smelling them. He heard the click of metal against ceramic as Yuugi accidentally knocked his spoon against his cup.

"Is something wrong, Mr. Bakura?"

"It's not Honda who's over here," said Ryou dully. He cringed and took another step back from the direction of the kitchen. "You'll find out when you check with your people later…."

"Wait, so who is it, Mr. Bakura?"

Ryou felt a sudden annoyance and exhaustion well up inside him. "Why should I even tell you?" he asked with a heavy sigh. "You already know it, you just haven't heard back from your team yet. You'll know soon enough. I'm sorry."

Ryou then hung up on Isono.


	32. Chapter 32

Ryou set his phone to silent. He buried it back in the pocket of his coat and hoped to forget what Isono had just told him. A moment later he returned to the kitchen, smiling, and told Yuugi that Fugata had called and said he wouldn't be home that evening, that he was caught up with work.

"Cool," said Yuugi. "No old man telling us when to go to bed. Awesome. Anyway, have you heard of that game with the haunted house, and there's a lot of different storylines you can follow? I brought the supplementary material with me to show you. I was thinking we could get together with Ryuuji and maybe Jounouchi and Honda and play sometime. Look."

Ryou took the glossy pamphlets of game instructions and stories, but didn't look at them. He watched Yuugi instead, barely registering what Yuugi was saying.

"You should stay here," said Ryou suddenly, practically interrupting Yuugi as Yuugi was about to walk him through the materials. "You can sleep in my dad's—or well, Fugata's—room. It's a long way back into the city from here. I personally don't like to make the trip on public transportation at night."

"No, I'll just call a taxi if I'm here that late. No problem."

"Just stay. The house is kind of creepy when it's just me. And you, talking about haunted houses and things, and then leaving me alone here, scared of the dark and unable to sleep."

"Ha ha ha, yeah right, like you're scared of a game, Ryou. You write way creepier stuff than this into your horror campaigns."

Ryou winced guiltily as though Yuugi had figured out the truth. "I dunno, I guess…I guess I'm just kind of lonely here." Ryou figured this lie would be more believable because all the best lies contained a kernel of truth. "I'm so far from you guys in the middle of the city. I guess having Mr. Fugata here all the time has cause me to feel a bit how cut off I am from people. I like company. I like having my friends around."

"I'll tell everyone, and we'll all spend the night here tomorrow. We'll bring sleeping bags and pillows, and it'll be like a big sleepover. Like kids."

"That'll be embarrassing," said Ryou, laughing at the mental image despite his fitful mood. "Nobody's going to do that. We're too old for sleepovers."

"But you're lonely and need the company of your friends. I think everyone'll agree to it. Shizuka will find it silly and kind of cute, Jounouchi will want to make it a drunk sleepover so it's upgraded for adults, Honda will go along because he never has anything better to do—though he'll probably try to bring his dog—and Ryuuji will bring a fine selection of games from his shops and energy drinks so we can play them all night."

"Well, when you put it that way, I guess it sounds like it might be fun."

"It will be. I'm gonna call everyone and make the plan for this weekend."

Ryou laughed with Yuugi, but didn't know if he'd ever be able to tell Yuugi why Yuugi really needed to stay. Sure, there was a stipulation in Yuugi's contract with KaibaCorp that Yuugi's friends and family couldn't be kidnapped. It probably didn't say anything about Yuugi himself, though.

"Yuugi,' said Ryou after the tea was finished and the game had been gone over in exhaustive detail. The visit was drawing towards its end, and Ryou couldn't think of any more questions to ask. He'd already had a small heart attacked when Yuugi had stepped away to go to the bathroom, certain that Kaiba's people were there and would abduct Yuugi through the bathroom window. Now, at last, there was nothing left to stall for time. Finally, he simply, plainly asked, "Do you know a shadow magician?"

"A what?" asked Yuugi with a laughing smile that got tangled in his poorly concealed surprise.

"You might not know it, but someone is trying to use you to perform a very powerful spell. Seto Kaiba's people are going to come after you. Kaiba believes you have something to do with a shadow magician that is threatening him."

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"They know you're here right now, Yuugi."

"Uh, you sound kind of crazy. Is this a joke?"

"I can't promise you'll be safe here, even if you stay. They might just break the door down and come for you anyway. We can't stop them."

Yuugi scooted his chair back a little and fiddled with a metal bracelet uncomfortably. He stopped looking Ryou in the eye.

"You're…you're kinda freaking me out, Ryou."

Ryou wanted to scream at the realization that Yuugi intended to play dumb to the extent of accusing Ryou of being a crazy person. "Just tell them you didn't know," Ryou insisted, aware that even if Yuugi pretended to not know what Ryou was talking about, he could still hear everything Ryou said perfectly. "Tell them who the shadow magician is, and tell them you didn't know the shadow magic was real."

"Ryou…."

"I'm sorry. Mr. Fugata is named Mr. Isono and he works as a security officer and right-hand-man for Seto Kaiba. He's been looking for you, and now he knows where you are. He doesn't really want you, though. They just want the shadow magician. Just tell them who the shadow magician is."

There was a deafening buzz of someone calling at the gate. The sound intruded upon them like a third presence already in the house. Ryou jumped. He spoke faster.

"I don't want anything to happen to you, Yuugi. I don't care why you got mixed up, or how, or what your intentions were. I just need to know you'll try to get out of this. I just need to know you won't get in trouble for the sake of the shadow magician."

The buzz sound started up again. This time it went longer, more persistent. It began to go off over and over, insisting Ryou answer it.

Ryou rose from the table and went to the hall. Yuugi followed him, staying close.

"H-hello?" asked Ryou into the intercom, his eyes shut. He hoped it wouldn't be the exact voice he knew deep down it would be.


	33. Chapter 33

"Holy shit, you're actually home," said the distorted voice of not Mr. Isono, as Ryou had been dreading, but rather Jounouchi. Ryou's knees nearly gave out. For a few long seconds, he couldn't even speak. Yuugi answered for him.

"Hey, Jounouchi, it's Yuugi. I beat you here by like an hour. What took you?"

"Shizuka promised to walk her neighbor's dog, but she got a headache, so I had to do it instead. Let me in, man."

"Sure."

Yuugi pressed the button to open the gate. He went to greet Jounouchi at the door. Ryou, meanwhile, remained rooted in place next to the intercom, utterly lost.

"Did you bring the game from Ryuuji's?"

"Right here," said Jounouchi, bringing the box out from under his arm. "Think fast," he added, tossing something that glinted metallic in the light of the kitchen. Yuugi reached to catch it, but missed in the uneven darkness of the hall where they stood. It flew past him and hit Ryou lightly in the chest. Ryou saw it was a small, single key. Ryou looked down as the key clattered to the floor between his feet. He bent down to pick it up and handed it over to Yuugi. Yuugi thanked him and apologized.

"Honda's coming out here. I convinced him on the way over," said Jounouchi. "We just have to pitch in some money for gas, and he can take us both home after if we're still here when the trains stop running."

"Awesome. It'll be more fun with the four of us together," said Yuugi. He turned to Ryou. "I'm sorry we didn't ask your permission first, Ryou. But yesterday you did say we could come over any time to try out a new game."

"I didn't realize…so soon," said Ryou, but this was about as far as he went in expressing any sort of disapproval. He followed the other two into the living room, which had the only table large enough to play the game.

As he helped Yuugi set up the board and explain the basic premise, Ryou thought perhaps what had just happened was a boon in his efforts to protect Yuugi from Seto Kaiba's team of security officers. Certainly they wouldn't kidnap Yuugi in front of unsuspecting witnesses. If Yuugi went home with Honda and Jounouchi, then he'd probably make it there safe. The question was what would happen when the three parted ways.

Honda arrived not much later than Jounouchi. Ryou and Jounouchi caught him up with the game while Yuugi went to the bathroom for a minute. Ryou kept himself alert to any suspicious sounds, uncertain of if the surveillance outside could even tell that Yuugi was out of sight of his friends. After a few minutes, he couldn't stand waiting any longer and excused himself by saying Yuugi and he had drunk a lot of tea while waiting for Jounouchi to arrive.

There was the sound of muted speaking coming from the bathroom. Ryou stopped to make sure he knew it was Yuugi before he approached the bathroom door on tip-toe. He wasn't sure why he was being so secretive, or what he might gain from overhearing Yuugi's private conversation. Regardless, he felt compelled to approach with care so as not to alert Yuugi of his presence.

"Yeah…Kaiba's…about…. How do…out…. I dunno."

Ryou had every reasonable suspicion in the world to think that Yuugi was talking to the shadow magician right now. He was telling them about Ryou and Isono, had probably warned them that Isono knew Yuugi was involved, and was probably asking for help in how to get out of this mess. Ryou sighed and reminded himself that secrecy wasn't the way to go about this. He knocked on the door. Yuugi's voice stopped.

"I'll just be a second," said Yuugi louder.

"Don't take too long," said Ryou. "Seriously, don't."

Ryou returned to the living room and told Jounouchi and Honda that Yuugi was taking forever. Jounouchi made a crude joke about it, and Honda told him to grow up, even though Honda had laughed at the joke himself. Jounouchi repeated the joke when Yuugi finally returned. It prompted Yuugi to apologize for taking so long. He sat down to begin the game.

By the time the four of them finished playing the game twice, the trains had indeed ceased to run. Honda complained all these late nights were going to kill him at work if he kept it up. Jounouchi just pat him in the back and called him a damn good friend. Honda wasn't consoled by much, but agreed it was partly his fault for buying a car. Now Jounouchi was going to invite him everywhere just to have Honda drive. He needed to stop answering Jounouchi's calls after 7pm.

Ryou went outside to see the three off. Honda led them to where he'd parked his car down the street, and Ryou and Yuugi followed a distance behind. Ryou wondered who would speak first, him or Yuugi.

"I'll hang out with Jounouchi later," said Yuugi casually. "It's too late to make Honda drive all the way to my place. He lives nearer to Jounouchi anyway, since it's a straight shot on Roque Street."

"That's good."

"I'll probably go to the shop with Jounouchi tomorrow, too. I've been meaning to catch up with sorting the new DDD shipments. It's kind of a huge mess around there in general. I'll probably be all day at the shop."

"I'm sure Jounouchi will appreciate the help."

"It's not really helping. It's kinda my shop. I'm responsible for it."

"Oh, yeah, that's true. Sorry."

"No problem. I'll probably rope Jounouchi into helping me after closing, too. It might take days to get everything in order. I'll probably just hang out at his place...if...you need to find me for whatever reason."

Ryou nodded. Yuugi had taken his advice. He wasn't going to isolate himself and make it easy for Seto's men to come after him. How long he could keep it up, however, was impossible to know.

"Take care, Yuugi," said Ryou as they caught up with Honda and Jounouchi. "And next time," he said, speaking to all three as they piled into the car, "warn me before you spontaneously all decide to crash my place and play games. Seriously. My new roommate might start leaving passive aggressive notes if this sort of thing always happens."

"Hey," said Jounouchi. "Yuugi only texted me after he found out your roommate was out for the night. I totally would've warned you if this were my plan. I thought Yuugi told you already."

Ryou looked at Yuugi, who smiled sheepishly and didn't meet his eye. Apparently Ryou hadn't been the only one eavesdropping on phone calls. Ryou was once more reminded that, for however sturdy they appeared to be, the walls of his house were paper-thin when it came to private conversations. The only room that had any remote level of privacy was his father's room, the quietest room in the house, or in any house Ryou had ever visited.


	34. Chapter 34

Isono was sitting on the steps outside Ryou's house, waiting for Ryou and smoking a cigarette. He seemed to be alone. Ryou wondered if he really were.

"You invited your friends over?" asked Isono. His face was tired. Ryou knew he hadn't slept in over 48 hours. Anyone who looked at the man's face would know that, too, at this point.

"It won't work," said Isono. He didn't bother to stand as Ryou approached. Ryou stepped around him to the door. "I still know it's Yuugi Mutou, Mr. Bakura. That was obvious long before Katsuya Jounouchi arrived."

"Go home and rest," said Ryou. "You can't protect your boss if you can't even keep your eyes open."

"You haven't made the job an easier," said Isono. He reached back and grabbed Ryou by the ankle before Ryou could enter the house. His hand was so large it wrapped completely around. Ryou was emphatically reminded of his immense physical disadvantaged if Isono decided take some sort of retribution against him.

"I doesn't matter what you told him, if anything. He'll mess up at some point. He'll get lazy or over-confident, and he'll make a move that puts him right where we need him. This delay you've made is only temporary."

"Please, let me go," said Ryou. He attempted to pull his foot into the house after him, but Isono didn't release his grip.

"I've half a mind to take you with me."

"I'm Yuugi's friend. KaibaCorp can't just kidnap me."

"But once we have Yuugi Mutou, that won't matter."

"Once you guys have Yuugi? You and who? You and Kaiba, or you and your team?" asked Ryou. Ryou noticed Isono tense up slightly, and then Ryou knew. "Have…have you even told your boss yet that it's Yuugi Mutou?"

Isono let go of Ryou's ankle and stood up. He walked towards the gate without replying.

"You haven't told him?" asked Ryou, flabberghast. "Seto Kaiba wasn't literally the first person you called with that information? You're…you're hiding it from him?"

Isono spun back around. "I'm not hiding anything," he said. He stared Ryou sternly in the face. Ryou retreated a little more into the open doorway. "Mr. Kaiba will be devastated. He might just lose his actual fucking mind over this. Personally, I'd rather catch the shadow magician before I implicated Yuugi Mutou as the shadow magician's assistant. It's something my master is better off knowing after the fact."

"And does your boss know you lie to him?"

"It's for his own security," Isono assured him. "Also, you seem to forget I have two bosses, Seto _and_ Mokuba Kaiba. I'm following Mokuba's orders to protect his brother's state of mind as much as his physical self. Therefore, I'm choosing not to tell Seto Kaiba about Yuugi Mutou yet. I'll tell him afterwards and say Yuugi was being controlled by shadow magic. You of all people should know how great shadow magic is for mind control."

"You need a magical artifact to control people's minds."

"Seto Kaiba doesn't know that."

"What sort of adviser are you if all you do is lie to the guy?"

"I'm the kind he needs, the kind he deserves. You can't fully protect something unless you familiarize yourself with all the myriad ways it can break."

"And why are you telling me all this?"

"Because I want the message to get to Yuugi. I want you to tell him that if he changes his mind about helping the shadow magician, he needs to come to me, not to Mr. Kaiba."

"You won't hurt him?"

"What? And have Mr. Kaiba find out? Not a chance."

"I don't trust you."

Isono watched the glowing end of his dying cigarette instead of Ryou. He smirked. Ryou, who had only ever known Isono at his most professional, didn't recognize the person who was standing down in the small yard below him. The smoking, smirking man with the tired eyes was someone new and threatening. Ryou wished to put the shut door between them, but remained in place, transfixed, waiting for what Isono might say.

"It's not my job to make you trust me," admitted Isono. "But you ought to trust my judgment." He stepped forward, but went past the stairs to throw away the end of the cigarette in the outdoor bin. When he returned, he climbed back up the stairs. Ryou moved to shut the door, but Isono placed his foot in it. Isono made no further advance inside, but spoke in a low voice though the narrow slot leading into the house.

"Keep this in mind," he said. "If Yuugi Mutou strolled into KaibaCorp and put a gun to Seto Kaiba's head and promised he was going to kill him, the only thing that would upset Mr. Kaiba more would be if someone managed to kill Yuugi before Yuugi could pull the fucking trigger."

"What does that mean?"

"It means Yuugi has a sort of right no-one else has. He has a privileged position you and I can't really understand. I've already told you that Mr. Kaiba is highly attuned to shifts in power dynamics. That's he's easily offended if _any of us_ oversteps our bounds."

"Yes…."

"Then let's just say that, in the highly improbable scenario I've just told you, Yuugi wouldn't be overstepping."

Isono pulled his foot back and turned away from the door.

"I hope I've made my point clear," he said, regaining his professional composure as he directed a polite nod of the head to Ryou, who stared back unmoving. "Good night, and try to get some sleep. I'll take your advice and get a bit of shuteye myself. Farewell."

Isono turned, and this time he left. Ryou watched him go, saw the lights of a car pull up, and heard Isono greet the driver and get inside. Finally, with the sound of the car door swinging shut, Ryou closed the door to his house and locked it.


	35. Chapter 35

Ryou took a deep breath in and exhaled slow. His cheeks puffed up like balloons with the pressure of the air. Again, he took another deep breath, trying to mentally nudge himself back to attention. This breath he released in less of a sigh because didn't want the only other person in room, Ryuuji Otogi's secretary, to judge him.

He'd spaced out for a moment, indeed nearly fallen asleep, in the reception room of Black Clown headquarters. He couldn't remember why he hadn't handed his coat to Ryuuji's secretary. It was draped over his left arm, keeping the tops of his thighs warm unnecessarily. He shifted in his seat, and felt the hard, square weight of his phone slip between his knees. A fold of the coat was pulled down along with the phone, causing Ryou to sigh and lift the coat up to adjust how it lay. The secretary continued to type in firm, deafening strokes, not once looking over.

Ryuuji Otogi was supposed to have been in the office today. His secretary had told Ryou this over the phone an hour ago before he'd made the forty-five minute trek into the city. The secretary had also warned him that Ryuuji was getting rather erratic about keeping his scheduled hours. Ryou understood why. Slowly but surely, KaibaCorp had begun to take over full operations at Black Clown, leaving little work for the actual owner of the company to do. This arrangement had been partly at Ryuuji's own insistence. He'd confessed to Ryou that Black Clown as a brand had grown past his ability to run it, and anyway, he didn't like being an executive. He liked to work in developing new games, because his passion had always been games, not business.

...He'd then joked that no, wait; his passion had actually always been revenge. Ryou had offered a fake laugh and changed the subject.

Ryou stood and waved a quick farewell to the secretary. The secretary offered to leave a note and his number in case Ryuuji showed up. Ryou left his name. Ryuuji already had the number.

Ryou's next stop was KaibaCorp. He had to take two buses from Black Clown, and then walk the final block to reach KaibaCorp Plaza on his own. It took him nearly an hour, and there wasn't even a guarantee that Ryuuji would be there. Several times throughout the trip, Ryou took his phone from his jeans pocket to check if Ryuuji had called him. No-one had.

KaibaCorp headquarters was fairly open and accessible. It was, after all, an office building. More than one business housed branches in the tower, though they were all in some direct away affiliated with KaibaCorp. Black Clown, for whatever reason Seto Kaiba had seen fit, also had a satellite office there. Ryou was heading to that office now. The secretary had told him that Ryuuji had canceled his meeting for that afternoon at KaibaCorp, but Ryou figured it wouldn't hurt to check while he was in the city.

Ryou bypassed the KaibaCorp welcome desk in the lobby and took the elevator directly to the floor where Black Clown had its offices. Though the suite of rooms was rather small, Ryuuji had assured Ryou that these offices were where the majority of the company's executive decisions were made. Here were the people who really ran Black Clown while Ryuuji syphoned off his allotted percent of the profits and bowed out.

Ryou checked with the receptionist at the front desk. He was told Ryuuji hadn't been in, again, and that the meeting had been canceled. But the receptionist would take his information if Ryuuji showed later. Annoyingly, the electronic form used to leave messages at KaibaCorp forced Ryou to add some sort of message beyond just his name and the time he'd stopped over. It took Ryou several frustrating minutes to compose something that was urgent enough but also vague. The form also forced him to leave more than one method for contacting him. All of this took forever. Ryou was swiftly regretting his decision to leave any message at all, but was too polite to abandon it after wasting so much of the receptionist's time.

Far too many minutes later than he'd wanted, he was finally free to leave the Black Clown offices at KaibaCorp. The only thing left to do now was to try Ryuuji's apartment.

Ryou called Ryuuji as he walked to the bus stop, but Ryuuji didn't pick up. This wasn't promising. Ryou swung by a convenience store for some provisions in case he was forced to wait two hours again. Weighed down with food and something to read, he got in line for the bus. This time he wouldn't walk the whole way.


	36. Chapter 36

"Kidnaping Mokuba Kaiba takes a lot of forethought and a veritable team of experts. So of course I haven't got him yet, Yuugi. It'll probably be weeks before I can get my hands on him, especially because I'm not involving a team of experts."

Ryuuji Otogi walked a six-sided die back and forth over his fingers as he paced the room. This was one of his most favored anxious ticks whenever Yuugi called him now. Yuugi was always calling with some kind of terrible news, some new revelation that changed everything and ruined their perfect plan. Who the hell was Seto Kaiba to go around believing shadow magic still existed? Who did the guy think he was? Ryuuji had assumed far too much. He'd thought he'd known who Seto Kaiba was, and he'd been wrong. Now things were going to get messy.

"What do you need Mokuba for anyway?" asked Yuugi. "Surely there's some other way? Something easier?"

"The only easy way was the one where I blew it and didn't realize Kaiba would listen to a shadow magician, much less know one well enough for them to get close enough to get two words in."

"Ryou said the shadow magician was Kaiba's assistant. The guy named Isono."

"I'm aware. You told me," said Ryuuji. He looked at the magazine in the corner, the one he'd bought that morning because it had photos taken by the paparazzi of Seto Kaiba lounging around at home in a tracksuit. Apparently there was some kind of vitally important debate over the brand, because Seto had never worn the tracksuit out in public. All that the world had was a collection of long-range photos showing blue and white fabric and no clear logo.

Ryuuji didn't give a damn about the tracksuit, though he'd hazarded a guess on the phone with Yuugi as to which brand he personally believed the tracksuit might be. What mattered more was the person in the background of two photos. Ryuuji recognized him without clearly remembering having ever met him, Seto's assistant and right-hand man, the infamous Mr. Isono. Ryuuji then searched online to find closer up images of the man in the background of videos of Seto Kaiba giving speeches. His presence pervaded nearly all of them.

While images proved simple enough to find, there wasn't much anyone really knew about Mr. Isono. Supposedly he was competent in Magic & Wizards and certified as an international arbiter of duels. Ryuuji was surprised to realize he'd even seen Mr. Isono in action first-hand during Battle City. Unfortunately, it'd been years, too long for Ryuuji to remember if anything had ever really stood out to him about the man. Apparently nothing about Isono ever did. It was kind of fucking amazing. What a damn professional.

"Kidnapping Mokuba makes me nervous," said Yuugi. "Is there some other way to connect to Kaiba's aura?"

"I mean, maybe something super important to him, like his three Blue Eyes White Dragons. But, trust me, Mokuba's way easier to get your hands on than a fucking Blue Eyes. At least Mokuba is out of Kaiba's sight for more than a few seconds at a time. Hell, I'm not even sure which is more effective, Mokuba or the Blue Eyes. Heaven forbid Kaiba's ever forced to choose between the two."

A dim tone began to sound over the call. Ryuuji look at the screen to see there was an incoming call from Ryou Bakura. Again. He sighed and let it ring out, telling Yuugi who it was as he waited for voicemail to pick up.

"Ryou's still trying to reach you?"

"Yeah. He doesn't leave any messages when he does, though. It makes me nervous, especially after what he told you last night."

"Do you think he suspects you?"

"I have no idea. I want to say no, because he told you to give up the shadow magician to Kaiba's people. Unless, of course, you're his favorite out of the two of us. In which case, well…."

Yuugi laughed imagining Ryou picking favorites of all his friends. If anything, they all knew it'd be Jounouchi, though none of them were totally sure why.

"How am I supposed to stay clear of Kaiba's men for the weeks it's going to take you to kidnap Mokuba? Should I just move in with Jounouchi now? I'm pretty sure he'll get suspicious after I spend more than week following him around twenty-four seven."

"I dunno…maybe if I can try to put a mind control spell on this Isono guy. He can't be that strong, right? I mean, he hasn't launched any counterattacks. You'd think Kaiba would be all about counterattacks…."

"You're asking me?" said Yuugi with a nervous laugh. "I don't know how to judge how strong people are at shadow magic. I don't even know how strong you are."

"Probably not strong enough to control a person's mind, now that I think about it," said Ryuuji. His voice broke and he had to sit down. "Look, I'm just floating the crazy ideas right now, okay? I actually have no idea what to do. I have no idea. I'm very sorry to have got you roped into this. We're both dead. Shadow magic doesn't work miracles. In this instance, Kaiba himself is probably way stronger than we are just because he's got his own private police force. Shadow magic kinda sucks at being a useful thing that's applicable to your every day life and defensive needs. There's just…so many conditions on it. It's not an easy thing to do. That's why the Egyptians made portable artifacts to control it. Otherwise, it's almost impossible to use practically. What the hell was I thinking?"

"Calm down, Ryuuji. I'm sure we can figure something out."

"But, I mean, how am I even going to get close to Mokuba Kaiba to kidnap him? I don't even know him, and now that Kaiba's on to you, he's not going to let you near his little brother, either. And it sucks because there's all this shadow power built up in anticipation of a huge, giant spell, and now…what do I do? Release it into the world? People will start seeing ghosts."

"Wait, what? _Ghosts_?"

"Maybe you could just turn yourself in, tell Kaiba it was me, we resolve this together, and once the shadow energy is all cleared up, I say goodbye to you all because no-one will ever see me again…."

"Ryuuji…."

"I don't want to hurt people. I didn't bring so much shadow power into the world not expecting to use it up and send the shadows back. I just wanted to change this one thing about the world that I didn't even think was asking too m—wait."

"Wait what?"

The other end was silent.

"Ryuuji? What am I waiting for?"

Finally, there was a rustle of sound as Ryuuji brought the phone back to the side of his face.

"I gotta go, Yuugi. Someone's at the door."

"Who?"

"I dunno. Maybe it's that weird Isono guy ready to take me out. Although if he knows anything about shadow magic, he ought to know death ends nothing when it comes to a huge fucking spell."

"Are you serious, Ryuuji? At least check who it is before overreacting."

Yuugi could hear someone knocking now. Ryuuji had entered the front room where the sound was louder.

"Like, look through the peephole in the door, Ryuuji."

"But in movies they always shoot the person who looks through the peephole."

"They're going to shoot you in your apartment in broad daylight for all your neighbors to hear? That's what you think is going to happen? I mean, it's Seto Kaiba. He'll probably interrogate you first to figure out how to use shadow magic to improve his next product line or hostile takeover."

"You're right. Slowly tortured to death while all my arcane knowledge is extracted from me is way preferable to getting shot through a peephole."

"Just check."

Ryuuji inched to the door, keeping out of the frame. He stopped and nervously waved his hand over the peephole in order to block the light and perhaps give the impression that he was standing in front of it. Getting shot through the hand was probably survivable. It beat getting shot through eye at any rate.

Nothing whatsoever happened. Outside in the hall, someone sighed and slumped against the opposite wall. Ryuuji heard the scratch of the metal fastenings on the mystery person's coat as they slid down the wall to the floor. He then heard the sticky tap of loud and annoyingly unmuted typing. It went on for a while. The message—no, the veritable magnum opus of unceasing text—being written was slow and deliberate, punctuated by occasional flurries of hurried backspacing and the hints of increasingly exasperated sighs.

Ryuuji listened with batted breath to the click of each letter. Finally, he heard the hollow sound of the message being sent. To Ryuuji's shock, his phone dinged soon after.

"What was that?" asked Yuugi, who'd been waiting patient and silent on the other end of the call for the past five minutes Ryuuji had spent listening to someone type on a phone.

"Shhh," whispered Ryuuji. He checked his phone and saw he had a message from Ryou. He clicked on it. It was long as fuck.

"Oh, it's Ryou outside," said Ryuuji. He hopped over to glance thought the peephole and saw a familiar mane of pale hair bundled in wintry layers when it was only the first few weeks of fall. "He sent a long message complaining how he can hear me moving around in the apartment, and he's very disappointed that I'm not answering the door."

"Answer the door, Ryuuji. He's been looking for you for two days. I'm starting to feel bad for him. It's kinda sad."

"Fine," said Ryuuji. "Hopefully he's not Kaiba's shadow magician."

"I seriously doubt it."

"Same."


	37. Chapter 37

Ryuuji Otogi didn't have tea to offer his guest. All he drank was coffee and juice. He offered Ryou a bottled juice, something with peaches, but Ryou told him not to bother and began unloading his pockets of snacks.

"Hungry?" asked Ryuuji, taking in the miscellaneous degustation of Ryou's favorite convenience store selections.

"Last time when I waited outside I was starving, so, I might've gone a bit overboard," said Ryou. He pat himself down to make sure he'd got everything. At his left pocket, he stopped and felt around a hard, square object. He reached into the pocket, but it was empty. "Probably the phone inside," he muttered to himself and shrugged.

"No, you handed me your phone," said Ryuuji. He held up Ryou's phone, which he held with his own. Ryou frowned and pat the left side of his coat again. There was definitely something there. He opened the inside pocket and reached down, hoping it wasn't something that might've melted from his body heat.

There was a small, slim box made of burnished metal. It was fairly light, like a cigarette case. Next to it, there was a watch.

Ryou's eyes grew wide.

"Oh no…" he whispered as he stared down at the two items in his hands. "Oh no no no no no no no…."


	38. Chapter 38

Few people had Seto's personal cell number. They were so few, in fact, that Seto had considered not even keeping his own phone. The only people who ever needed to reach him away from work were either related to his work already, or were his little brother. Seto wasn't the kind of person people ever called for a casual chat. They always needed something when they contacted him. Naturally, if they needed something that merited calling his seldom-used personal phone, then that thing was probably related to a world-ending cataclysmic event.

At the current time, there was something of a crisis going on, which meant Seto had the personal cell on around the clock. Seto figured that this was the true reason he kept the phone: so he could properly gauge the severity of a problem before the problem was even brought to his attention. It helped him modulate his reaction and maintain the illusion of constant control. Isono was supposed to call him immediately with any new developments, and the cell phone was the fastest way to reach Seto directly. This didn't mean Seto was entirely used to using the phone, however. The first time the phone had started ringing that evening, Seto hadn't recognized what it was for several seconds. Once he'd finally remembered it was his personal phone, he couldn't find it before the ringing had ceased.

Now, he held the phone in his hand and watched it, waiting to see if it would ring again. The missed call wasn't a number he knew. Seto Kaiba didn't call people back, so, he wasn't going to call this number back. If it were truly important, the caller would try again.

Seto was right. The caller did try again. He wondered what sort of catastrophe must've happened. Maybe someone had blown up the house? Or kidnapped Mokuba? But no, Mokuba was old enough to take care of himself now. In that case, Seto was pretty sure the house was a smoking ruin.

"Who is this?" asked Seto, barely letting the phone ring once before answering.

"It's Yuugi Mutou. Mokuba gave me your number."

"Oh." The house was probably fine, then. "Do you want something?"

"Yes. Ryou asked me to bring you back your Blue Eyes White Dragon."

"My what?"

"The card."

"My…how? How the hell do you have my damn Blue Eyes White Dragon, Yuugi?"

"It's a long story."


	39. Chapter 39

Two hours before Yuugi Mutou's phone call to Seto Kaiba, a hush fell over Ryuuji Otogi's living room. Ryou was scared and gradually infecting Ryuuji with his fear as well. Neither of them moved except to breathe.

Ryou clutched the small box with the Blue Eyes White Dragon inside it very close. There was no way he could imagine this ending well. Seto already despised him. What would Seto do when he found out Ryou had been traveling all around Domino City, falling asleep on trains, standing close to strangers on buses, squeezing through crowds on the sidewalk, all with a precious Blue Eyes White Dragon in his inside pocket only half zipped shut?

He told himself to calm down. He assured himself that he definitely didn't need to tell Seto all of that. Most likely Ryou wouldn't get a chance to say much of anything, anyway. Seto would hear nothing past the stammered "so, uh, I _accidentally_ took your rare card home with me". The only thing Seto would take away was that Ryou had stolen his card. Even if somehow Seto realized Ryou hadn't intentionally stolen it, the fact still remained that Ryou had forgot it in his pocket for nearly two days.

Stealing, frankly, would've been a better excuse. Stealing involved forethought and brain to think it with. Ryou clearly had no brain.

Ryuuji asked twice what was wrong with Ryou. The third time he asked, he placed a hand on Ryou's shoulder. Ryou jumped out of reach and slipped the case back into his inside pocket, making sure the zipper was shut all the way when he closed it this time.

"What's going on with you?" asked Ryuuji. "You're making me nervous. You've been texting me over and over for days, and then you show up and act all weird? Is everything okay?"

"I'm sorry about texting and calling so much. I wanted to talk to you about some…things," said Ryou. He pulled his coat tighter about him, like someone might break in and try to yank it off of him now that he knew what it contained. "Weird things have been going on, and I needed to talk to someone. Someone not involved. Although…now I guess I know Honda, Jounouchi, and Shizuka aren't involved, either. Honda would've been easier to find, too. It's just Yuugi that's involved."

"What? Involved? In what?"

"He's helping a shadow magician destroy the world."

Ryuuji laughed nervously. "Wait. Are you trying to get back at me for not answering your calls? Listen, I was very busy making a lot of arrangements for an upcoming tournament. It's not every day Black Clown assigns me real work. I couldn't disappoint. I was meaning to get back to you when I had time…."

"This isn't a trick; it's a serious problem. The world is in danger. I can't show you because I can't do the spell like Mr. Isono can, but I've seen it. I've seen the danger the world is in, and it's all focused…" Ryou clutched the object in his coat pocket tighter, "…on Seto Kaiba."

"Are you okay?" Ryuuji reached out again to put his arm around Ryou's shoulder and console him. It wasn't something Ryuuji normally would've done, but Ryou just looked so worn and pathetic. Ryou, however, was much too on edge for physical gestures, and squirmed out of Ryuuji's reach. He never let go of whatever was in his coat pocket.

"Please, believe me, Ryuuji. Please. I'm not making this up. I can totally hear myself, and I can totally tell how crazy I sound, but I don't know how else to explain all this. Plus, I've just found out that…."

Ryou couldn't stop fixating on what was in his pocket. He looked down again, seeing something in the square shape his hand was wrapped around that Ryuuji couldn't see. Ryuuji stared down, too. They were both silent again, rapt to at a handful of bunched fabric that Ryou clung to with trembling and bloodless, pale fingers.

"It's rude to ask, but what the hell is the box in your pocket, Ryou?"

"I don't know if I can tell you. I don't know if I can tell anyone."

"…Does it have anything to do with this shadow magician you said Yuugi's involved with?"

"Not really, no."

"Then what the hell is wrong?"

"It's something I'm not supposed to have. Like, really, really, _really_ not supposed to have."

"What is it?"

"What it is actually isn't that important. Whose it is…on the other hand…."

"Well, whose is it?"

"Seto Kaiba's."

"And… _what is it_?"

"A Blue Eyes White Dragon."


	40. Chapter 40

"I have an idea," said Ryuuji. His voice shook. So did his hands. He nearly dropped his phone when he took it from the table.

"Don't tell anyone else!" cried Ryou in alarm, moving to take the phone out of Ryuuji's hands. Ryuuji pushed him back gently, telling him to calm the fuck down, please.

"Shit, you'd think I was calling the police on you," said Ryuuji. "I'm going to call Yuugi. Don't freak out. Think logically. Who's the one person Kaiba would trust to hold on to his Blue Eyes and deliver it to him safely?"

"I get that you're implying it's Yuugi, but—"

"Exactly! _Yuugi_ _Mutou_. He's probably got Kaiba's phone number and everything, so he can call Kaiba and tell him that you—I'm assuming by accident, _somehow_ —took a Blue Eyes White Dragon home with you. But also, man, seriously… _how the hell did you accidently bring a Blue Eyes White Dragon home with you_? How the fuck does anyone do that? Why aren't there KaibaCorp security officers busting my door down as we speak?"

"I don't think Kaiba knows it's gone yet."

" _H-how_? How can he not know?"

"He gave it to us…to use…."

"Us?"

"Mr. Isono and I. Mr. Isono left it with me for safekeeping when he went to my house, but in all the commotion…I think he forgot I still had it. Honestly, we both kind of forgot. He'll probably get in more trouble than I will. It's just that all this shadow magic stuff is really overwhelming, you know? He doesn't show it, but I'm pretty sure it's been taking a lot out of him. Maybe I should call hi—"

"No, Ryou, that man owes you nothing and might just throw you under the bus if Kaiba finds out. His job literally depends on blaming you."

Ryou looked at Ryuuji curiously, startled at Ryuuji's change in tone. He looked Ryuuji over, not sure what he was searching for. Ryuuji wasn't looking back, but had already finished dialing Yuugi and was lifting the phone to his ear.

"If we give the card to Yuugi, it's a sign you took responsibility and tried to work things out the right way. Kaiba will be way more understanding if this comes from Yuugi."

Ryou remembered what Isono had told him about Seto and Yuugi. Ryuuji had noticed the same thing. Apparently beating Seto at card games all throughout his duelist career, even without the Pharaoh Atem's spirit assisting him, had promoted Yuugi to a position equal to or perhaps even greater than Seto's own. There were no bounds Yuugi could overstep.

"Hey, Yuugi! What's up? Ryou's here. Yeah. And hey, guess what? Apparently there was some kind of mix-up. I don't know all the details, but in short, Ryou kinda has one of Seto Kaiba's Blue Eyes in his coat pocket. Yeah, weird, right? I was wondering if maybe you could come over here and pick it up, and then call Kaiba and tell him? It'll probably be better coming from you. Yeah. Yeah. Don't call him right this second, but maybe in like an hour. Exactly. Yes. Just as I said. Good luck. Bye."

Ryuuji hung up the phone and then turned to Ryou.

"There you go, Ryou. Solved."

Ryou slumped back into the sofa. He never let go of the contents of his coat pocket, but his fingers relaxed slightly. There seemed to be a new problem every day now, ever since Isono had shown him that shadow magic was still real and could be controlled by people without magic items. Getting involved with shadow magic made you a magnet for drama, and Ryou kind of wished he'd never offered to help Seto Kaiba at all. He should've just said he'd felt bad for him, and then stayed home. Safe. Unknowing.

Yuugi was helping the shadow magician and they were going to do…something. Destroy the world? Murder Seto Kaiba? Apparently Yuugi was allowed to kill Seto Kaiba. At some point, he'd earned the right to do that. Maybe that was why the whole world seemed to be under threat? Murdering Seto Kaiba was bound to impact the global economy. If KaibaCorp fell apart to infighting in the chaotic aftermath, it might just send the world into a recession. Perhaps Mokuba Kaiba wasn't strong enough to keep his brother's broken and reforged company together when it threatened to break apart again.

"Maybe we can't trust Yuugi," said Ryou.

"Of course we can trust Yuugi."

"But the shadow magician…."

"Oh, yeah. That."

"I'm not making it up."

Ryuuji took a seat on the opposite end of the sofa, giving Ryou and his closely guarded Blue Eyes White Dragon plenty of space. He turned and faced Ryou, sitting cross-legged and resting his elbows on his legs.

"Fine, tell me the whole story. Yuugi won't be here for a while. He's coming with Jounouchi for some reason. Tell me everything about this shadow magician who's destroying the world as you know it."


	41. Chapter 41

Yuugi's biggest problem was figuring out how he was going to leave the Kame Game shop without alerting Isono's team and getting captured before he had a chance to meet Seto Kaiba. He suspected that if Isono's people got to him, there'd be a delay. Instead, he invited Seto to come to the game shop. He then went to tell Jounouchi and his sister to close early.

"What's going on?" asked Jounouchi as he swept the main shop floor. "Why are we closing early?"

"We're going to have company. Someone who doesn't like to run into people."

"Oh. So, Kaiba, right? Why is that jerk coming?"

"Because I challenged him to a duel."

"What? That's awesome! Are you gonna kick his ass here at the shop? You know I never get tired of watching you wipe the floor with that guy."

"No, we're leaving from here."

"To where?"

"I can't say. He chose it. It's a personal duel we arranged to make up for canceling the duel we had scheduled for next week. I mean, we both did all this preparation, and then there was that security issue at the last minute. We want to try out our new strategies."

"Damn. Of course Kaiba would arrange the exact duel that would make us suffer."

"I don't think it was intentional. There've been some security issues at KaibaCorp recently. He hasn't gone into detail, but he wants to limit the amount of people present."

"Just me shouldn't be a problem."

"Just you might be a huge problem."

"Kaiba himself is a huge problem."

"Just keep an eye on the shop, Jounouchi. I'll be back tomorrow, first thing."

"Yeah right. First thing my ass. You're always late."

Whether Yuugi might've argued against this or simply agreed, neither Jounouchi nor Yuugi would ever know, because at that moment there was a loud knock on the door. Yuugi silently implored Jounouchi to behave and keep his mouth shut before passing him to open the door.

The tall form of Seto Kaiba stood in the doorway, enveloped in a long, pale gray coat, pristine despite the hazy rain setting down at slow intervals outside. He held his own umbrella, something Yuugi only then realized he rarely saw. It was true, then, that Seto had come alone.

…Or well, as alone as it was possible for Seto to go anywhere. Driving the car, Yuugi saw when he looked around Seto to the street, was the man Yuugi silently dreaded: the eerily empty-faced Mr. Isono. Yuugi pulled his own coat on, bringing up the hood and reaching for his umbrella next to the shop door.

"Just walk with me," said Seto before Yuugi could fumble uselessly with opening an umbrella to walk the short distance to the car. "Hurry up. We haven't got all day."

"Sure," said Yuugi. He brought the umbrella with him, but didn't open it. He stayed close at Seto's elbow, and followed Seto to the car. Isono stepped out, oblivious to the drizzle, and opened the door. Seto handed Isono the umbrella and got in first, grumbling in annoyance when Yuugi thoughtlessly tried to enter the car before him. Yuugi obediently followed after.

"So…where are we going?" asked Yuugi brightly.

"Far," said Seto. He'd removed a book from his briefcase, but the bookmark had fallen out, so now he was looking for his place with a frustrated flick of each page.

"Uh, and how long will that take?"

"A…while."

"An hour?"

"Perhaps."

"Are you going to tell me anything?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't know. Mr. Isono only agreed to let me duel you if he could decide where, and he won't fucking tell me."

Yuugi glanced at the two prongs of hair on either side of Isono's head like horns. He imagined Isono was some kind of devil, some cosmic, antagonistic force. Yuugi itched to call Ryuuji, but he knew it'd be too suspicious. He had to hope Ryuuji could get the shadow magic to work with the Blue Eyes. Speaking of which….

"Where's my card, Yuugi? I'd like to have it back before I duel you."

Yuugi fidgeted nervously in his seat. He lied and said he'd forgot the card at the shop. Seto literally threw down his book, and Isono pulled over and slammed on the breaks. Though Yuugi had expected Seto to lose his shit, he hadn't fully expected Isono to go along with it and stop the car. Both rounded on him, their faces unpleasant. Isono looked as though Yuugi had deeply betrayed him. Seto just seemed disgusted that Yuugi could be so fucking stupid.

Yuugi cringed and, although everything was still technically going to plan, cowered a little in his seat. He felt terrible for letting these two very angry people in the car with him down.

"Sorry…?"

Seto snatch the book back up from the floor and dusted it off. Once more he began to search for the page.

"Keep driving Mr. Isono. Why the hell are we stopped?"

"Yes, sir."

They pulled out onto the road once more. Yuugi breathed a sigh of relief. He longed to begin the duel soon. Once Yuugi was dueling, Yuugi was in control. When Yuugi was dueling, he was unbeatable. He could only hope to make it that far.

Yuugi looked at the back of Isono's head. He wondered just how far he might get.


	42. Chapter 42

"Yuugi's helping the shadow magician. We can't trust him," said Ryou, holding his face in his hands as he finished the long, strange story of the past few days. "Maybe…maybe I should just go and bring the card to Kaiba myself."

"Why would Yuugi need the card?"

"Because you can connect to Kaiba's aura with it. Mr. Isono and I were using it to read Kaiba's aura and track down the shadow magician's assistant. It's how we found out the assistant was Yuugi."

"I don't think you need to worry about Yuugi stealing the card."

"Why? He'll probably know how powerful the card is. He'll probably even deduce why I had the card in the first place. He knows I know about the shadow magician. He knows I was helping Mr. Isono."

Ryou stood and began to fasten his coat. "Actually, I'm going to leave before Yuugi gets here," he said. Ryuuji stood as well, moving to the door. "If I get a taxi on Branduardi Street, I can be at KaibaCorp in twenty minutes. I should've done that the moment I realized I had the card. I'm sorry I got you involved in this. Apologize to Yuugi for me."

Ryuuji had made it all the way to the door while Ryou fussed with his coat. He took a key from a shelf and turned it twice to lock the deadbolt from inside. Ryou heard it and looked up. Ryuuji shrugged. He offered Ryou an apologetic smile.

"Ryuuji? Why?"

"You're right that you should've gone straight to Kaiba when you found out you had his Blue Eyes," said Ryuuji. Ryou's phone was in his hands, and he was holding down the button to turn it off. Once the screen went black, he lifted it over he head and tossed it up onto a high shelf along with the key to the deadbolt.

"No…."

"Also, Yuugi's not coming. He knows what he has to do. We've been preparing for months. I would've liked another week or two, just to play it safe, but I have more than enough shadow energy accumulated now for the spells."

"You can't…no…you're the shadow magician? _You,_ Ryuuji?"

"Yes. And now that you've confirmed for me that it will work, I need you to hand over that Blue Eyes White Dragon you absconded with. I have to start getting ready for the duel."

Ryou backed away, keeping an eye on Ryuuji as he searched for a path out of the room. There were only windows and a seven-story drop. His eyes darted toward the kitchen.

"There's nothing sharper than a butter knife in there," said Ryuuji blithely. "I don't cook, and I don't never invite company over to eat. I doubt you're the kind of person to threaten a friend with a knife, though. You'd be too scared you might get yourself in a situation where you'd actually have to use it."

"You don't know that."

"I do. The fact that you even warned Yuugi about Isono tells me that. You're loyal to a fault, Ryou. I even considered getting you to help me, but the problem was I couldn't imagine any way you could get close enough to Kaiba to challenge him to a game. You always just wanted to play Magic & Wizards for fun, never in the tournaments. Kaiba would've never noticed you that way. Still, if Sugoroku hadn't died and changed Yuugi's mind, I would've considered involving you. Maybe you would've taken pity on me and gone through with it. Maybe two years from now, once you'd built up some fame and dueling credibility, it would've been you challenging Kaiba instead of Yuugi."

"I'm not as strong a duelist as Yuugi. I might've lost against Kaiba even after two years of preparation."

"Which further proves that I got extremely lucky when Yuugi changed his mind about helping me. Just like how I'm extremely lucky you showed up here with that Blue Eyes White Dragon in your coat pocket."

"Not lucky enough that I'm just going to hand it over to you without a fight."

"But consider _not fighting_ me," said Ryuuji. He stepped forward, decreasing the space between them as Ryou backed up faster. Ryou thudded hard against the wall and staggered from the momentum of impact. He continued to shield the case with the Blue Eyes White Dragon inside it with his hands.

"Not fighting me would be a lot easier," continued Ryuuji, getting nearer as Ryou inched away along the wall. "I know the apartment better than you. There isn't much here you could use as a weapon. I don't want to hurt you or get into a scuffle. I loathe scuffles. You'll lose."

Ryou shot towards the door to the bedroom, shutting it behind him once he was inside. He groaned in agitation that there wasn't a lock on the door. He peeked out and saw Ryuuji was standing around, texting someone, not even in a hurry to go after Ryou. Ryou glanced frenziedly around the sparsely furnished bedroom. Ryuuji had been right about how few weapons there were. Ryou's eyes fell on the door to the balcony.

Ryou crossed the room and unlatched the balcony door. With difficulty it slid open, accompanied by the squealing, heavy scrap of rubber against metal implying its rare use. Ryou slipped though the narrow opening he'd forced and stepped out into the cold of late afternoon on the seventh floor. The sky was already a dull, wintery gray in every direction but the east. There, the fringes of a rainstorm were beginning to sweep in, bringing a wind that blew Ryou's hair about and nearly blinded him. He grasped the rail without seeing it and began to unfasten the top half of his coat. He reached for the zipper of the inside pocket.

Ryou had just got his hand around the case when he felt himself being pulled back by the hood of his coat. He tried to hold the railing, but Ryuuji was hitting his fingers with a house-shoe. They were too numb with cold to retain their grip. He let go, and he and Ryuuji both tumbled back. Ryuuji anticipated this better than Ryou and moved out of the way before he could become trapped beneath Ryou's dead weight. Ryou, unable to catch himself, hit his head on the door and cried out in pain. Ryuuji hopped over him and began to drag him back into the apartment by his shoulders. Ryou squirmed and tried to stop him, but found the restrictive cut of his coat greatly inhibited his ability to raise his free arm high enough to even brush Ryuuji's forearms.

Ryuuji kicked Ryou's feet out of the way and began to close the balcony door. Ryou scrambled to his feet and raced back to the bedroom door and into the main room. Ryuuji swore when he heard Ryou begin to open the living room window. He came running, pushing Ryou away before Ryou could throw the case with the Blue Eyes out into the street. Ryou wriggled free of his grasp and ran to the side of the room with the coffee table. He grabbed a handful of snacks and began throwing them at Ryuuji. Ryuuji, despite his tired panting, laughed as the light bags of candies and chocolate bars bounced off of him. He suggested Ryou throw the case with the Blue Eyes next. Maybe it had a sharp enough edge to do some damage. Ryou did the next best thing and threw Isono's watch. It hit Ryuuji in the face.

Ryuuji swore again at Ryou and clutched the side of his face. Ryou ran to the bathroom and locked the door right as he heard Ryuuji shout and slam against it. Ryuuji began to bang on the door, imploring Ryou to open it immediately. Ryou sat on the edge of the bath tub and considered his options.

Ryou stared back at himself and his tired, pained expression just barely high enough to show at the bottom of the large bathroom mirror. He willed himself to action, but found he couldn't be moved. He needed to purposely destroy the Blue Eyes White Dragon card, tear it into little pieces and flush it down the toilet, and it felt exactly like a death sentence.

"Please, Ryou, I know what you're thinking, and I'm begging you, don't do it."

Ryou lifted the case up and pressed the button to release the clasp holding it shut. The lid lifted with a small click. Ryuuji was quiet just in time to hear this small sound. He began to hit the door harder.

"Ryou! Please! I promise we're not hurting anyone. We're not going to destroy the world, okay? We just…we just want to get rid of Magic & Wizards. That's it. Think about it. Why the hell would Yuugi agree to help me destroy the fucking world and all the people? Yuugi would never destroy the world, and he'd never hurt Seto Kaiba. I mean, like, physically hurt him. Or kill him. That isn't our plan."

Ryou observed the silvery hide of the dragon embossed on the card. It shimmered like cold metal, like the scales of a cold-blooded reptile, like ice. He rested the case in his lap and reached down to lift the card. Before his fingers even brushed the surface, he paused. He closed the case with a muted snap and set it on the counter. Then, he went to wash his hands. For whatever reason, he didn't wish to sully the glossy surface of the card with the oil of his fingers, despite the fact that his intention was to destroy it and dispose of it in a toilet. He felt like that was disrespectful.

A strange scratching sound came from the door. Ryou hadn't noticed how quiet Ryuuji had got, not until the door popped open and Ryuuji lept into the room. He quickly spotted the case and made a dive for it, dropping the butter knife he'd used to jimmy the weak bathroom lock and muttering to himself that the card better fucking still be in there. Ryou's reflexes weren't quick enough to stop Ryuuji from taking the case with the card and rushing out of the room as fast as he could.

Ryou grabbed a hand towel and then went after Ryuuji, drying his hands and discarding the towel on the floor. Ryuuji was taking his phone from the kitchen counter and laughing again, overjoyed to have come out ahead. He sidestepped past Ryou, just out of reach, before Ryou could corner him in the kitchen. Ryou chased him to the bedroom again, where Ryuuji slipped over the towel in the doorway and fell.

There was a flash of something metallic, which Ryou recognized as the case with the Blue Eyes White Dragon inside. It cut through the air and landed at the entrance to Ryuuji's closet. It had enough momentum to skid along the ground and disappear under a shoe rack. Ryou pushed Ryuuji down before he could rise, scrambling over him to get to the case first.

Ryou shot his hand under the shoe rack. He felt around the dust and hanging laces for the hard metal of the case. His fingers finally brushed something smooth and so cold it almost felt wet. He snatched up the case and brought it out, but before he got so much as a look at it, everything went black.


	43. Chapter 43

Ryou was disoriented by the darkness. Physically, he was perfectly fine. No-one had touched him. He wasn't hurt. There was no pain but where he'd hit his head before and the fading ache of the fingers Ryuuji had attacked so viciously with the house-shoe. So, why couldn't Ryou see?

Ryou turned around in time to notice a thin line of light at the bottom of the closet door go dark. This was accompanied by the solid sound of a heavy object that had been dragged over and propped against the door. Ryou then realized what had happened. He'd been shut inside the closet, and Ryuuji had just barricaded the door. A moment later, a dim yellow light in the ceiling came on.

"Sorry, Ryou," came the muffled voice of Ryuuji from the other side of the door and whatever he'd placed in front of it. "I hope you're not claustrophobic or anything. When I'm done, I'll let you out, but it might be a few hours. No hard feelings."

"I'm going to shout until someone realizes something is going on," said Ryou. "Let me out now."

"No, see, the person who lived here before me kept a piano in the bedroom, so they had the room built to be soundproof. I then added a closet along the wall. You ought to have plenty of room to stretch out. I think there's a bench you can sit on in there, too. If you want, the door can still open a crack. I can try to get some of your snacks to you."

Ryou opened the door, but the crack was much narrower than Ryuuji had anticipated.

"Yeah, never mind. I'd need to break even the potato chips in half and slip them through one by one to get them in there. Sorry."

"And if something happens to you, and I'm trapped here?"

"Nothing will happen to me. Yuugi's the one at greater risk here. He's the one who's going to play the shadow game. That's one of those million annoying things about shadow magic, you know; it often involves some sort of wager to really get right. Lucky for us, Yuugi tends to win."

"And if he loses?"

"C'mon. It's Kaiba. Yuugi will kick his ass."

"But Kaiba knows how to manipulate Yuugi into losing. Especially in a match that isn't televised."

Ryuuji sighed and flicked a light switch beside him. Inside the closet, the light began to go on and off. Ryou told him to stop. Ryuuji said he would come over and annoy Ryou back like this every time Ryou annoyed him. He suggested Ryou behave.

"The Blue Eyes White Dragon isn't in this case, is it?" asked Ryou. At the same time, he opened the case. It was empty.

"Yeah," said Ryuuji, holding the card up to show it to Ryou through the narrow crack in the door. Ryou made out only a glimmer of silver. "First thing I did was take it out of the case. Just a touch of slight of hand, really."

"Smart move," said Ryou. He tossed the worthless case into the floor of the closet and sat back on the ground. "Oh well."

"Would you really have destroyed it?"

"What?"

"The card? Would you really have destroyed the card?"

Ryou shrugged, alone and unseen by Ryuuji. "I have no idea," he said. "And anyway now it doesn't matter."

"You're right," said Ryuuji. "Right now what matters is changing the world."

"You mean destroying it."

"Not all of it."

"But more than enough."

The light in the closet once more began to flicker on and off. Ryou pressed his legs against the door and pushed back, but it didn't budge. Whatever was blocking the door creaked lightly, but that was it.

"Ryou, I don't have time to be playing with a light switch. I'll put you in the dark directly, and trust me, once I start working the shadow magic, you don't want to be alone in the dark around here."

Ryou stopped trying to push the door open. The flickering stopped.

"Much better. Make yourself comfortable; this might take a while. I just need you to be patient and try to bear with me here, okay."

Ryou was quiet. The light flickered on and then off once.

"Fine," said Ryou.

The light flickered again. "I didn't hear you."

"Fine!" said Ryou louder and kicked the door.

The light stayed on. Ryuuji was satisfied.


	44. Chapter 44

_**Author's Note:** This chapter is a duel. Most of the cards are ones that I invented. Seto's cards are based on dragons in pop culture. Yuugi's cards are based on classic board games and card games._

 _Also, my very real need to not have to mess around with numbers is evident in how I chose to write this duel. I wrote it how I perceive all the duels in YGO DM: skipping over attack strengths and how exactly the complicated effects work, and just gasping along dramatically when lifepoints change._

* * *

The battle to decide the fate of the world would take place in the lobby atrium of a luxury island resort off the coast. The resort was closed for the season and remote enough to limit accidental interference by unwitting bystanders. Isono alone conducted Yuugi and Seto by speedboat to a private mooring within a man-made grotto unseen from the primary harbor of the resort complex. Seto criticized Isono for this, reminding him that the resort itself was almost completely empty. Who was going to see them enter through the front door? Isono winced and admitted Seto was right. He confessed he'd chosen the back entrance by a force of habit, and not for a particular security reason.

Yuugi nearly slipped into the sea clambering out of the boat and onto the narrow dock, causing Seto to express further disappointment with Isono's selection of venue. The three made it together without further incident to the elevator, Seto leading the way with the confident stride of a man long familiar with all luxury accommodations located within Domino City and the outlying municipalities.

Yuugi recognized the resort as a place he'd once come to for a dueling event. He found it especially familiar when they reached the shadowy atrium lobby. He remembered it as it'd looked in-season and filled with light and sound. It'd been crowded then, and he'd been on a stage like an island, surrounded by a sea of people with the literal sea outside. Now the wide space, which had seemed so much bigger back then, was empty. It had shrunk into itself, the walls coming in closer. A whispering quiet settled in viscous layers from the highest point of the peaked glass ceiling down to the thickest silence at ground level. Occasionally, there was the patter of rain and rare drops so large it sounded as though they exploded against the glass. An endless wind tore through the foliage outside and slapped branches and debris against the windows looking out to the sea and the blurred lights of Domino City far across the bay. At just the right angle, the whistling wind howled and replaced all other sound.

Yuugi felt his footsteps twice, once in his feet and again in his ears. Seto walked louder. His shoes were heavily soled and clicked against the tile with authority. Seto criticized the weather, the dimness, the fact that dust had already begun to settle without the continual upkeep of a full maintenance staff. He complained about everything because he knew no other way to express his true disappointment: the knowledge that Yuugi Mutou was working with a shadow magician to bring him down.

Seto would've preferred Yuugi had acted alone.

"This place is already set up for the latest holographic projection technology, so I understood why you chose it, Mr. Isono. Remote enough and prepared enough. But I'm still not convinced it was necessary. We could've dueled in the fucking board room at KaibaCorp HC for all I care."

"Sir, there are too many people at headquarters."

"What? You'd rather no-one see me be responsible for ending the world as we know it?"

Yuugi faltered in his step. He knew Seto knew about the threat reaching for him from the shadows. But, what Seto had said….

"The shadow magician and the shadow magician's assistant are still at large, sir…."

"I know it's Yuugi."

Both Yuugi and Isono stopped. Seto simply slowed enough to reach back and take a headset from a tray of three in Isono's arms. He continued to walk forward, only stopping once he was a proper dueling distance away. He turned around and put the headset on, gesturing with an unconcerned wave of his right hand for Yuugi and Isono to do the same.

"How, how did you find out, sir?" asked Isono once his headset was activated. He stayed a full distance away with Yuugi, ready to stop Yuugi should he try something. Yuugi did nothing. He was watching Seto with an expression just a stunned as Isono's was. Until that very moment, Seto had given zero indication that he knew Yuugi's real motive for dueling him.

"Ryou Bakura came by KaibaCorp today. There's a form you have to fill out when you want to leave a message for an executive who isn't in. Three sections are obligatory, indicated with a red asterisk: your name and contact, your reason for leaving the message, and a selection from one to ten how urgent the message is. Then, anything with an urgency rating greater than seven is flagged and sent to my office."

"I…I'm familiar with the form, but I didn't know messages were flagged for your attention. Since when…?"

"Ever since practically forever, Mr. Isono. I designed it to help keep things from going to shit behind my back. Of course I couldn't tell everyone, or else they would make sure to put the urgency ratings below seven when they wanted to hide something."

"Is that even legal, Mr. Kaiba?"

"Do I even give a fuck?"

Isono was sufficiently silenced.

"Anyway, Ryou Bakura left an urgent message for Ryuuji Otogi. He tried to put just "talk" as his reason, but the system doesn't accept 'talk' as a reason. He then tried 'talk about stuff', which also doesn't work. He put 'talk about Yuugi'. From there, I began to make the connection. But, three words is too short for an acceptable message. He was finally able to submit a message when he put 'talk about a problem related to Yuugi'. He rated the urgency a full fucking ten, too. He was probably fairly frustrated with the system at that point, and that always leads to the urgency being rated higher. Anxious people overreact."

Seto lifted the arm where he'd strapped his duel disk and turned the device on. Yuugi likewise activated his own.

"Is the system ready, Mr. Isono?" asked Seto.

"Yes. I called the caretaker to activate the entire atrium. Even the fountains and decorative lighting can be initiated at your command, Mr. Kaiba. If you'd like some ambiance."

"The sound of the rain is all the ambiance I need for what I presume with be a shadow game," said Seto. He glanced over to Yuugi. "Right?"

"The shadows will be ready in about twenty minutes, on the half hour."

"Ready? As in…?"

"It's not an instantaneous thing, shadow magic. Not without a magical item. It needs to, like, build up."

"Then I guess I should defeat you in fifteen minutes," said Seto. Lights flashed on the duel disk as Seto placed his deck inside and the duel sequence initiated. "You challenged me, so I'll go first. It's time to duel."

Yuugi initiated his own duel disk. They drew their first hands.

 _[AUTHOR'S NOTE: In case you skipped the notes at the start of the chapter, here's a friendly reminder that all the following cards except like four are stupid jokes of cards that I made up. Very important you know that before you read what happens next...]_

"I summon Conga Warrior Bruce Lee in attack mode, activating its special ability 'Enter the Dragon', which allows me to summon any dragon from my hand directly to the field. I summon Great Stone Dragon in defense mode. I set one card face down and end my turn."

Yuugi wasted no time getting the duel underway with it's very first attack. "I summon Lord Licorice in attack mode and activate the magic card Licorice Whip, increasing Lord Licorice's attack by 300 points. Lord Licorice, attack Great Stone Dragon!"

With a wave of his arm and flick of his wrist, Lord Licorice reduced Great Stone Dragon rubble using his Licorice Whip-Lash Attack. The lord stroked his goatee as he gloated over his victory, but Seto grinned wider.

"You've activated Great Stone Dragon's effect, Dragon Raiser Gong. When Great Stone Dragon is destroyed in defense mode, the dragon Mushu is summoned to the field."

A gong sounded. A small red dragon, practically a lizard, appeared on the field amidst the mound of gravel left by Great Stone Dragon.

"Plus, when Mushu is summoned to the field with the effect of Dragon Raiser Gong, he gets to say hello. Do you know how he says hello?"

"No."

"How men say hello: _Punching_. You take one hundred lifepoints of damage."

Mushu shot across the arena and punched Yuugi's lifepoints directly. Yuugi [3900] grimaced and played an effect card facedown. He ended his turn.

"I summon Haku of the River Kohaku in defense mode. I then discard a card from my hand to activate Mushu's second ability 'dishonor on your cow' which prevents your monsters from attacking for a full turn. I end my turn."

"In that case, I summon Colonel Mustard in defense mode. I'll place another card down and end my turn."

"Defend yourself while you can, Yuugi. My assault won't stop. I sacrifice Conga Warrior Bruce Lee and Haku of the River Kohaku to summon Smaug, the Richest Dragon in attack mode. So long as Smaug is on the field, I receive 50 extra lifepoints in the second phase of each turn. I'm also allowed to draw one extra card at the end of my turn. Smaug, attack Lord Licorice."

Smaug exhaled a fiery breath, incinerating Lord Licorice into a blackened mass of what looked like but thankfully didn't smell like burnt sugar. Yuugi [3800] shielded his face from the all-too-real flame effect as it whooshed past him.

"Finally, I play Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which allows my dragon hacker to hack your deck and force you to discard three cards from the top of your deck at the end of every turn."

Smaug let out a roar as Seto's lifepoints increased by fifty [4050]. Seto drew a second card.

"I end my turn."

"I summon Mr. Body in defense mode. With Mr. Body on the field, I can activate my magic card 'Ms. Peacock in the Study with a Wrench'. This allows Colonel Mustard to guess three possible cards in your hand. Of those he guesses right, he gets to see one. I guess Blue Eyes White Dragon, Dragonite, and Pot of Greed. Can you disprove my suggestion, Kaiba?"

Seto sighed and begrudgingly held up one of only two cards remaining in his hand for Yuugi to see. It was Pot of Greed.

"Would you like me to tell you what it does?"

"No thanks, Kaiba. I'll set another card facedown and then activate 'Go Fish!' allowing me to guess a card in your hand and take it."

"Shit."

"I guess Pot of Greed."

"Fucking take it."

"I now activate Pot of Greed, which allows me to…."

"I fucking know already."

"…take two cards from my deck and add them to my hand."

"Fuck."

"I end my turn."

The hacker dragon appeared at Yuugi's side, and Yuugi removed three cards from the top of his deck and placed them in the graveyard. The hacker dragon nodded in approval and returned to Seto.

"I summon Khaleesi in attack mode. I also play Mother of Dragons, allowing Khaleesi to combine its attack with any dragon on the field, raising Khaleesi's attack strength. Khaleesi, Mother of Dragons, destroy Mr. Body with Mushu at your side. Smaug, destroy Colonel Mustard. Now, Yuugi, your lifepoints are wide open. Mushu, attack Yuugi directly."

"Not so fast. You activated my trap card Beccare il Due di Picche. Literally, To Get the Two of Spades. In Italian, this means to turn someone down. It means you've struck out. My trap card "turns down" your attack, negating it and saving my lifepoints."

Seto grumbled as a giant two-of-spades card set itself like a wall between Yuugi and Mushu. "I'll end my turn," said Seto. Smaug roared and Seto's lifepoints went up again [4100]. He drew a new card.

"I now summon King Kandy to the field in defense mode. I'll also play Molasses Swamp. Your monsters are now trapped in molasses and are unable to change position or attack for a full turn. I'll place another card facedown, and I end my turn."

Yuugi removed the requisite three cards from the top of his deck and deposited them in the graveyard at the hacker dragon's behest.

"Hahaha. You won't be on the defense for long, Yuugi. Soon you'll be on you knees. I sacrifice Khaleesi and Mushu to summon my Blue Eyes White Dragon."

Yuugi smiled, though he had no monster on the field that could face the assault of a Blue Eyes White Dragon. The smile was an apology. "I just want to say," he said, stepping out of the headspace of the duel for a moment. "I'm really sorry I forgot the third Blue Eyes. I'm sorry if it's hurt your strategy in any way."

"Yeah, no, I'm pretty sure you didn't forget it. I'm pretty sure you stole it from that idiot Ryou Bakura and gave it to the magician already."

"Well, okay, yes, I didn't actually forget it. But I want to clarify that I didn't steal it from Ryou. I never had the card, actually. The shadow magician stole it from Ryou and then, like, called me."

"Wait, so is Ryou in trouble?" asked Isono, breaking from his stoic arbiter stance. "Did the shadow magician kidnap him?"

"Uh well…sure…" said Yuugi, lying terribly. "Ryou was kidnapped. Yeah. That…happened."

"Mr. Kaiba, I must check with my team to find out where Ryou is. Delay the duel."

"If I delay the duel, the shadows will arrive. We have six minutes. And anyway, I have my Blue Eyes on the field now. He's got like…a fat man in defense mode. Honestly, this should only take another turn. Two max, depending on his facedown cards."

"But sir, if Ryou Bakura is in danger th—"

"Then it's your fault for leaving the card with him, and you'll have to fucking live with that, Mr. Isono."

"But si—"

"Goddamnit, Mr. Isono! I'm dueling here, okay?"

"I jus—"

" _Recite for me_ the fifth standard of international arbitration of duels, Mr. Isono."

" 'The official duel arbiter can only interfere with an ongoing duel in the capacity of an arbiter, taking no sides and providing no unsolicited commentary.' "

"And that means shut up unless one of us duels wrong, which isn't likely to fucking happen because we're damn professionals. Now, back to this magic card I'm playing. I activate "How to Train Your Dragon", which raises the attack strength of all dragons on the field by five hundred points. Since I can't attack, I'll have to end my turn."

Smaug roared, announcing another increase in Seto's lifepoints [4150]. Seto drew a new card.

"Don't get so confident. Your lifepoint increase has gone too high, and now you have to pay… _your taxes_. You activate my trap card Income Tax. You can either pay one thousand life points directly, or you can pay ten-percent of the summation of the attack strength of all the monsters on your side of the field plus your lifepoints."

"Ten-percent the summation."

"Are you sure? Because once you stop to do the math, you can't change your mind."

"Hell, Yuugi, I've already done the math. Subtract the nine-hundred seventy-five lifepoints, and let's move on."

Seto's lifepoints lowered [3175].

"Okay, but first I get to play the second effect of Income Tax: Free Parking. This allows me to pick up all the lifepoints you just paid in taxes."

"What. The fuck."

"So nine-hundred seventy-five lifepoints for me."

"I hope you choke on them."

Yuugi's lifepoints went up with a merry honk of the horn on a cartoon car [4775].

Seto physically threw down a facedown card, implying it was a trap should Yuugi have any more obnoxious effect cards up his sleeve. "Your damn turn, Yuugi."

"Okay, I'll start by summoning Kuriboh in attack mode."

"Is that all you have left?"

"And I switch King Kandy to attack mode."

"I mean, I know you just got a huge lifepoints infusion. But don't let it go to your head. You're still up against my Blue Eyes White Dragon."

"I activate King Kandy's special ability Calorie Bomb. This ability allows King Kandy to explode, raising its attack points by 1000 while also sending King Kandy to the graveyard. King Kandy, drop a Calorie Bomb on Smaug, the Richest Dragon."

Smaug was destroyed in a crackling explosion that sounded like a million pop-rocks and ended in pink and blue, cotton-candy clouds of smoke. When the smoke cleared, both Smaug and King Kandy were no more. Seto's lifepoints dropped with the difference [3125].

"I now set Community Chest. This allows me to increase the size of my hand to seven cards if my monster on the field has an attack less than 500. On the turn this card is activated, I can drawn however many cards I need to reach seven." Yuugi drew six more cards. "I set two cards facedown and end my turn."

Yuugi discarded three cards off the top of his deck once more. As he did so, he looked up at the towering Blue Eyes White Dragon. He then looked down at his poor, solitary Kuriboh before it. In his heart, he apologized to the poor Kuriboh. It didn't stand a chance.

"Finally. _Finally I can attack you_. I hope you enjoyed all those extra lifepoints, because I'm about to blow you the fuck away. Blue Eyes White Dragon, decimate that Kuriboh."

In a beam of white and blue lightening-fire, Kuriboh disintegrated and drifted in tiny fragments into utter oblivion.

"Would you like the math on how many lifepoints you've just lost? Because I've already done it. If you're curious."

Yuugi was on his hands and knees as three thousand two hundred points of damage were inflicted on him [1575]. In the absence of the Blue Eyes White Dragon's blinding light, the atrium around them seemed to have fallen into night. Outside, the storm clouds thickened.

Yuugi's skin began to crawl. For a moment, he forgot to breathe.

"Summon whatever the hell you want. You won't survive another attack. You're an idiot, guaranteeing yourself over three thousand points of damage just for the chance to hold extra cards that won't save you." Seto sneered, but found it hard to keep up. He hadn't seen Yuugi so affected by an attack in years. It reminded him of the past, of the confusing events surrounding his long repressed adolescence.

"I guess when you take so many retirements you get rusty," Seto continued. He sighed in frustration. "We ought to limit how many of those you can have in the future. They've got far too frequent. I'm disappointed. Get up and lose on your damn feet."

"I…I haven't lost yet."

"I mean literally, no, you haven't. But it's understood you're going to. Even without all three of my Blue Eyes White Dragons, I've had you on the defense since this duel started."

"No, this is exactly where I want you," said Yuugi. He stood, albeit unsteadily. Seto felt it more acutely, the sensation that something here reminded him of the past. Something in the air, in the weight of Yuugi's weariness, in the entire back and forth of the duel since the beginning.

Seto realized with a shock of terror that what was really making him remember the past was all the goddamn shadow magic that had formed around him and Yuugi. He looked for Isono, but Isono wasn't with them. He had no idea how long Isono had been gone. All he'd seen was the duel as the shadows had encroached upon them.

"Yuugi, tell me what the hell this is."

"It's the shadows. They're the magic. The shadow magician opens the door for them, keeps them collected within, and then releases them to do the magician's bidding."

"I don't mean literally. I mean what's your objective?"

"I'm tired, Kaiba."

"Of life? So you're going to destroy the world? That's stupid."

"I'm tired of Magic & Wizards. I'm tired of duels being the only thing anyone cares about. I'm tired of my role in all of it."

"And that's why you're going to end us all? You know, it's not actually the world's fault you hate it. Idiots who destroy themselves are every definition of a loser. Idiots who destroy themselves and billions of other people are sore fucking losers."

"I'm not here to destroy the world. I'm just destroying Magic & Wizards."

"What?"

"You care about Magic & Wizards more than anyone does, and you've anchored nearly your entire life to dueling. When you lose this duel, I'm going to take away the thing that gives you the most meaning in life, and that's Magic & Wizards. I'm sorry."

"You're joking."

"I'm not."

"Yes, you are, because there's no fucking way you're winning this duel without a miracle."

"I'm pretty good a dueling miracles, though."

Yuugi reached for one of the magic cards he'd set, but Seto stretched out his left hand in a motion beseeching Yuugi to stop and hear Seto out.

"If you destroy Magic & Wizards, you destroy KaibaCorp. You destroy countless livelihoods and a corporate structure that not only supports my company, but much of the actual world. Without global games like Magic & Wizards and a strong leader like KaibaCorp supporting the game, the world will fall into anarchy and chaos. This is why KaibaCorp has diversified into so many different products beyond game technology. We keep the peace of the entire world through games, particularly Magic & Wizards. Because, tell me Yuugi, would you rather play cards, or would your rather play soldier?"

The shadows moved in closer. They surrounded Yuugi, danced across his skin and in the air around him. Watching him was like looking at something held beneath rushing water. The shadows near Seto kept their distance, giving him a wide berth that seemed unnaturally imposed. A few times Seto saw a shadow rush toward him and then stop dead at the invisible border. The shadow was confused as to why it couldn't proceed. Seto knew he had to lose before the shadows could reach him.

"Magic & Wizards brings the world together, Yuugi. You can't take it away. You don't have the right."

"But there's so much more than Magic & Wizards." The shadows around Yuugi trembled in the agitation of Yuugi's voice. They moved aside so Seto could see Yuugi clearly once more. "There's a richness and variety to games beyond dueling. But, none of that gets a chance. People think everything needs to be like Magic & Wizards, or it isn't good. You aren't even helping. All you care about is milking Magic & Wizards for the profit. I'm not against a global game uniting the world and bringing peace—if that's even true. I'm against the reality that no other games have a real place in this world anymore. I'm just so tired of Magic & Wizards."

Yuugi reached once more for the magic cards he'd set. This time, he ignored Seto's call to wait.

"By inflicting over three thousand points of damage to me in a single attack, you've activated my magic card, Inferno Tempest. Every monster in our decks and in our graveyards is removed from play."

"What the…?"

"And now that seven or more of my cards have been removed from play, I activate my second spell card, Chaos End, destroying all monster cards on the field."

Seto watched in stunned silence as his Blue Eyes White Dragon vanished. The atrium—or well, wherever they were—seem to have gone deathly quiet with the departure of every monster in the game. Seto frowned at the two remaining cards in his hand and played nothing. He ended his turn.

"By discarding my last five cards," said Yuugi, "I activate another magic card, 'Uno!' Whoever decks out first automatically wins the duel."

Seto looked down at Yuugi's incredibly thin deck. Yuugi looked, too, and laughed.

"Uno," said Yuugi jokingly. Seto flinched. Yuugi was down to a single card in his entire deck. "I end my turn."

Yuugi then took the final card and discarded it for the hacker dragon.

"I play Cloud Storage, which backs up my data and lets me return the field to a previous save point from my last turn. I use it to bring back my Blue Eyes White Dragon and your Kuriboh."

"Too bad it requires you to skip the battle phase," said Yuugi. He sounded like he actually regretted this. "If I'd had a few more cards in my deck, you'd have won."

"What happens when I lose?" asked Seto. His arms lowered to his sides, the weight of the duel disk suddenly too much to bear. "Do I die? Do the shadows carry me off? What happens?"

"Nothing happens."

"What do you mean?"

"I've...I've changed my mind."

"It kinda looks to be a little too late for that, but hell, what do I know about magic?"

"I'm not going to have them take Magic & Wizards from you."

"But they have to do something, don't they? You can't just tell them the deal's off."

"I won't destroy Magic & Wizards, but I want your people to redo my game, _The Magicians Spell_. I want you to do it right. Don't change it around. Don't make it into magician scrabble with my face on the box. Produce the actual game I wrote. That's all I ask."

"Fine. But what will the shadows take from me instead?"

"I don't want to hurt anyone you care about, but I can only think of one other thing besides your bother that's important enough to you to be nearly equivalent to losing Magic & Wizards."

"Which would be?"

"You'll never duel me again."

"No."

"It's not a punishment game if you aren't punished, Kaiba. I'm sorry. We can still play other games, but you can never duel me at Magic & Wizards ever again. It's really sort of a punishment for both of us. You've been my only worth adversary."

"There're so many other things you can take from me. My sight, my fortune, my company. You can take my damn hands. But, I have to duel you."

"The fact that you're offering so much in exchange only proves to me that this is the right choice. This is something strong enough to resolve the accumulated shadows."

"But the shadow magician? Won't that person come after you for going back on your plan?"

"The shadow magician has their own game to play before the night is over. There's no guarantee they'll even survive it."

"I hope they die."

"It'll be worse than dying. Their soul will be lost to the shadows."

"Whatever the hell it is, I don't care. I only hope they suffer. I hope it's terrible."

Yuugi smiled weakly. He looked at his empty duel disk and his kuriboh on the field, once more a speck of dust across from the ominous Blue Eyes White Dragon. It occurred to Yuugi that this might be the last time he'd ever get to see that dragon opposing him. Seto would never give any of the three cards away, and the fourth was sealed up, deep in the ground, resting in the loosely folded over hands of Yuugi's grandpa.

"Mr. Isono isn't here to arbitrate," said Yuugi. "I guess I have to remind you that if you can't play anything else, you should end your turn."

"My last turn," said Seto gravely. "My last duel."

"It's not so dramatic. We can play chess or Carcassonne or even a game of my own. There's so much more than Magic & Wizards."

"So you keep telling me," said Seto with a tired sigh. He looked at the shadows beginning to squirm at the fringes of the empty space around him. His body tensed in preparation, as though he were on the cusp of submerging himself into a frozen lake, when all he was doing was pronouncing the necessary words.

"I end my turn, Yuugi."

"And I have no cards left to draw, so, I've won."

At that moment, loosed from their binds, the shadows rushed in.

* * *

 _ **Endnote:** I was too lazy to cross the room to get my phone and double check, so I did the math for this duel in my idiot head. Don't judge me if I screwed up somewhere. I also had to combine a lot of stuff that was originally spell and trap cards into monster effect cards because damn it is such a huge problem that players only draw six cards at the start of the match. I originally just gave Yuugi Pot of Greed as a joke, and then it turned out that he actually really needed Pot of Greed at that moment because he was holding like zero cards. Hahaha..._


	45. Chapter 45

The five hours Ryou Bakura spent trapped had passed with excruciating slowness. Naturally, he'd begun to nose about for want of something to do that wasn't just sitting uncomfortably and staying relatively silent. Ryuuji ignored the occasional scoff that emanated from the narrow opening in the closet door as Ryou leafed through and judged all of Ryuuji's hanging clothes. Ryou, the baby-blue loving prince of year-round spring pastels, wasn't someone Ryuuji considered a real authority on fashion. He treated the small noises of derision as one treated the hollow knocking of a radiator in winter: it was only a big deal if it got too loud…or started whistling.

By the time Ryuuji was summoning shadows, Ryou had already made himself a nest of Ryuuji's thickest sweaters and fallen asleep. This had baffled Ryuuji, who'd asked the shadows to check that Ryou was still breathing when Ryou didn't immediately demand to know what was going on when shadows began to crawl over him. Ryuuji was deeply impressed with such fortitude and nonchalance. He asked himself what sort of shadow magic shenanigans Ryou had been subjected to in the past if he could just sleep through a massive conjuring of darkness and might.

Upon remembering the deranged expression painted on Ryou's face by the spirit of the Sennen Ring while dueling Yuugi, Ryuuji decided that no, he didn't want to know. He then remembered the bewildered look on Ryou's face as he hit his knees in the same duel and eventually passed out. This only made Ryuuji doubly sure of how much he didn't want to know.

The duel between Seto and Yuugi hadn't taken long. Ryuuji suspected it'd started early and that the shadows had only arrived in time to catch the end of it. Luckily, Yuugi had held his own until then. Seto had lost. Ryuuji knew because he'd watched both of their auras in the water after the spell and seen the shadows finally lunge forward and grasp Seto. Slowly, the speck signifying Yuugi faded from the image as his role was completed and the shadows were spent.

Ryuuji wondered if, in the end, Yuugi had gone through with their plan. Ever since Ryou had told Yuugi that he knew about the shadow magician, Yuugi had carried a look of doubt in his eyes. Ryuuji felt guilty when he saw it. He'd hinted to Yuugi that he didn't have to take Magic & Wizards from Seto. Ryuuji couldn't force Yuugi to take any particular thing away, because Ryuuji wasn't the one dueling. Only the winner of the duel could decide. In the end, it was up to Yuugi, and there was nothing Ryuuji could do about that.

On the other hand, there hadn't been any rebound of shadows. Nothing Ryuuji had sent out had come back to him. This caused him to suspect Yuugi had gone through with the plan. Or, he'd gone through with something, at any rate. Ryuuji might never know what. It depended on how his own final game panned out.

Ryuuji got up and moved the bed and chairs away from the closet door. He began to flick the light switch on and off repeatedly until he heard Ryou groan and roll over.

"Come out, Ryou. The world is over, and you and I are the only two left."

"What?"

Ryou didn't seem bothered, as though he already knew Ryuuji was only joking. The door to the closet didn't open for over a minute. Ryou was still on his hands and knees, peering out uncertainly, when it did. He saw Ryuuji in the middle of the room. On the floor in front of Ryuuji was a large, round slab of metal that had long since lost its luster. Ryou looked optimistically to the bedroom door, but saw there was only darkness where it should've been. The whole room was fringed in shadow, like a frame around a photo. The only two things in it were Ryuuji and his metal…table? Sparse illumination originated from several small candles set around the edge, and Ryou felt drawn to the light when everything else was covered in such impenetrable darkness.

Ryou stood and approached. He saw that it wasn't a table in front of Ryuuji, but a round game board with a track that spiraled down to the bottom of a shallow depression. There was a serpent's face in the very center of the spiral. Two more snakes with hoods like cobras stood vigil on opposite sides of the board. Two monstrous claws were on the other two sides. Sat on the floor with an arm propped on a knee, between a snake on his left and a claw on his right, was Ryuuji.

Ryou watched the board, feeling somehow that it was alive and might spring to attack him. The surface was discolored in patches and poorly maintained. At some point it'd been exposed to the elements, either buried or burned or in some way hideously neglected. No-one had restored it. It bore ages of damage like scars all across its surface, but it seemed it'd take a lot more that what it'd already been through to fully destroy it.

Ryou looked at Ryuuji. Ryuuji gave him a small smile, inviting him to sit down. Ryou sat. When he glanced behind him, the closet door was gone. They were now totally incased in a cage of shadows. If Ryou had entertained any wistful thoughts that Ryuuji might not be a competent shadow magician, he definitely didn't entertain them now.

"I know it looks a little worse for wear," said Ryuuji, apologizing for the appearance of the board, "but it's not dirty or anything. Just tarnished. Take a pawn."

Ryuuji held out two pawns across the shallow bowl of the board. Ryou didn't reach for either of them. He kept his hands on the floor at his sides.

"What is this? What's going on?"

"Ah, yes," said Ryuuji with a sigh. "I see you don't trust me. That makes sense. Let me explain. See, I was planning to kidnap Mokuba Kaiba."

This made Ryou laugh a little. "How were you going to kidnap Mokuba Kaiba?"

"I, uh, hadn't really got to that yet. But, I did make some alternate preparations for what to do about him after the duel ended between Kaiba and Yuugi."

"And I'm to presume these must be those preparations?"

"Yep. It's called the Devil's Board Game. Do you know what that is?"

"It looks like mehen."

"I guess it's related to mehen. This is the game my father challenged Sugoroku Mutou to a long time ago. We've sort of kept it in the family since then. It's survived a fire and everything."

Ryou felt even less inclined to take a pawn. He probably wasn't being given much of a choice, though.

"It's the game that aged and disfigured your father."

"Yes. But, you don't have to bet years on it. You can bet anything. Certain things are easier to bet than others. they have fewer unexpected side effects. In this case, we're going to bet our memories. Shadow magic loves to consume memories. As a magical procedure, it's pretty cut and dry."

Ryou crossed his legs in front of him and leaned back, away from Ryuuji's extended hand with the two pawns.

"You're going to bet your memory of everything related to what happened tonight," said Ryuuji. "Your memory of Mr. Isono, your memory of Yuugi working with me, and your memory of the shadow magician."

"And what are you going to bet?"

"You have to decide."

"What?"

"I'm choosing what you bet, so to be fair, you get to choose what I bet. I'm at your mercy. You can do me some real damage here."

"As in, I could make you forgot your entire existence?"

Ryuuji winced. "That would be grossly disproportionate to the simple crime of locking you in my closet for a measly few hours…."

"…and using my aura to supplement your spell, and using the Blue Eyes card to nearly destroy the world, and threatening me with a devil's board game to erase my memories."

"I don't need the full laundry list, Ryou. But, yeah, you can bet that. But then, you'd also have to bet all of your memories as well, to make it even. So like, maybe scale it back some."

"Then I guess if I have to give up my memory of what happened tonight, you have to give up your memory of how to use shadow magic."

"Again, my memory of shadow magic is too extensive to be equivalent to your memories of me being a shadow magician. Sorry. That's a neat idea, though. I totally would've let you make me bet that if it were possible."

Ryou fixed his gaze on Ryuuji. "What do I need to bet to make it possible?"

"Um…?"

"What would I need to bet to make it possible, Ryuuji?" Ryou repeated in a firmer tone, not looking away.

"I…uh…all my accrued occult knowledge for your accrued occult knowledge, I guess," said Ryuuji. He pulled back the hand with the pawns as he shrugged. "You've been reading about magic and the occult since you were a little kid, so that ought to be pretty fair. But like, I kinda also want you to forgot everything that's happened in the past few days in relation to me being a shadow magician, so…."

"Then I guess we're at an impasse. I don't think you should forget the past few days, so it isn't possible for me to make the same bet with you. No-one will believe me about what you did, especially if you can't remember it. I want you to remember so you can be held responsible."

Ryuuji clasped his hand around the paws and rested the loose fist against his chest. For a moment, he sat there, his eyes closed as he resolved himself.

"Then…I guess I'll have to bet my soul," said Ryuuji.

"Wait, what?"

"I'm going to bet my soul and challenge the remaining shadows, and if I win, they take your memories when they leave. If I lose, they take my soul. Effectively, I die. In a way."

"No! Ryuuji, I'll just agree to not tell anyone. I swear," said Ryou. Ryuuji only shook his head at him. The flickering light of the candles colored a ghostly tinge over Ryuuji's face, as though the shadows were already trying to taste him in anticipation. "I don't want you to die."

"I don't trust you, Ryou. It's not personal. I don't trust anyone but Yuugi, to be perfectly honest. Also, if Isono interrogates you, I don't trust you'll be able to hold out."

"Don't bet your soul. Please."

"Even if you think of something I can give up in exchange for your memories, it's not a guarantee for my soul. I have enough shadows accumulated to challenge you three times. If I don't win against you, I'm going to challenge the shadows. It's my soul or your memories, Ryou. I know I drive a hard bargain, but honestly, this sort of thing is what I was raised for. I'll have absolutely no hard feelings against you if you win. I'm not my father. I never gamble what I'm not prepared to lose."

"Your _soul_?"

"Well…."

Ryou's hands gripped the edge of the board. He couldn't remember when he'd begun to hold on to it. His eyes followed the spiral path of the serpent's body down to the lowest point. The board, he knew, was a well, and the serpent's mouth was a door leading away down a long tunnel with no light at its end. This was where the shadow magic came from. This was the well from which shadows and magic could be drawn. At the same time it was a whirlpool that could pull a soul down into it and never let it go.

The metal beneath his palms was warm. Unusually so. Ryou shivered despite the heat of the candles so near to him. He let go of the edge of the board and held out he right hand.

"I'll play white. Make it the full three games, unbroken. The shadows don't leave until the third game is over. Is that possible?"

"Yes. They can all leave together with their prizes at the end. The entire spell won't complete until I've opened the way for the shadows to return to their realm."

"So three matches, three chances, okay?"

"Okay."

"For the first game, I want to bet our memories of the shadow magic related events of the past few days."

"Our? But you said before…?"

"Yes. But, I can't think of what else to take from you. I don't really care to take anything important like your happiest day or your mother's face. I just…I can't. I can't do that to you."

"You could actually totally bet those two things, if you're interested…."

"I'm not interested."

"Then, well, thanks."

"Let's just start."

Ryou accepted the white pawn from Ryuuji. Ryuuji explained how the rules worked, noting that they would replace throwing sticks with dice just because that was what Ryuuji had on hand. Then, the race to the center began. From the center one could whisper a desire into the darkness and the shadows would answer. Ryou arrived there first. This meant Ryou won. When the shadows returned to their realm, they'd carry Ryuuji's memories with them.

"Hahaha. I inherited my father's luck," said Ryuuji ruefully as the final move ended. "They say the more you cast spells with shadow magic, the worse your luck becomes. It's the shadows reaching out for you, aggravated with how many times you've slipped out of their reach."

Ryou kept his expression firm. Now was the time to focus, not to chat. He might've won the first match, but there were still two more chances to lose. "You choose the second game," he said to Ryuuji, "because I won this one."

"Okay, well, I want to get this over with. I'm going to bet your memories against my soul. I know it seems premature to you, but odd as it sounds, betting your soul or your life actually increases your odds of winning this game. Or, well, it's more like with a soul on the line, the shadows can't influence your luck. My father's mistake was being a coward and betting simple years. He was never prepared to lose. If Sugoroku had lost and aged fifty years when they'd played, Sugoroku likely would've died. It gave Sugoroku an edge in the odds of winning. That's why my father was disfigured as well as aged. Years weren't equivalent to what he was really taking from Sugoroku if he won: Sugorku's life."

"I can't recommend anything else for you to bet?"

"No. Seeing how easily you've won just now, I suspect that you'll win all the games between us unless I bet my soul. The shadows want my soul more than your memories. They'll strive to put me in a position where I have to risk it."

"So, you're going to bet against the shadows now?"

"Yes, but your memories are on the line, so, the shadows will play through you."

"What if I throw the match?"

"This game requires no skill. It's purely based on luck. It's not the type of game that can be thrown."

"And if I refuse to play?"

"You agreed to three matches. You'll be made to play them."

Ryou ran his hands over his face and took a deep breath. He looked down at the board on the ground between them, and then back up into Ryuuji's eyes. Ryuuji's face bore no expression. Ryuuji wanted to be impassive, to present a strong front. He wanted to make this easier for Ryou, but he could tell that none of this was easy.

"Good luck," said Ryou weakly and handed over the dice he'd used last. He sincerely meant it. His memories meant nothing to him in comparison to Ryuuji's soul.

This time Ryuuji started with the white pawn. Ryou had black, but didn't really play the match. He moved like an automaton, compelled to play by the board itself although it was against his will. Ryuuji apologized and explained that the shadows couldn't manipulate the board directly. Ryou was their vessel. If "Ryou" won the match, he shouldn't blame himself for it. Ryuuji knew it wasn't really him playing.

Fortunately, Ryuuji won outright. He laughed at the outcome. Neither of them, it seemed, were destined to remember these games. That was probably a relief. Plus, he considered this outcome to have proved that betting one's soul gave one an advantage. He regretted that he'd forget it once the games finished. It was a very useful thing to know when working with shadows.

"Well, looks like we don't need the third game," said Ryuuji, much happier now than he'd been so far. Nothing made him happier than everything going his way.

"But we've agreed to three games."

"I know. But this can be an easy game. We can bet something stupid like the memory of our favorite food. If you like a certain food enough, you'll always find it again."

"I have something else in mind."

"Tell me."

"For the third game, I'm going to bet your occult knowledge against…."

"Your own occult knowledge. Of course. You don't trust having a shadow magician around."

"Not against my knowledge. Against my soul."

The blood left Ryuuji's face and the confident smile fell from his lips.

"Ryou!"

"My occult knowledge is useless, Ryuuji. What if betting it just makes you forget the equally useless shadow magic knowledge you have, but not the useful stuff? Shadow magic doesn't play fair. Or, well, it's tricky."

"It's not that tricky. The problem is that it's much too fair, and sometimes that has unintended consequences. I don't want you to bet your soul, though."

"But you bet an entire soul against my memories. That doesn't seem fair."

"No, when it comes to betting a soul, a soul has no value. By value, I mean measure. A soul's worth can't be counted. It's priceless in the most literal sense. You can bet anything against a soul. You can bet your soul to get a girl to ask you out, and you can bet your soul to destroy the planet. It's a token of only perceived value. It matches the worth of whatever you bet against it because by betting it against something, you are stating that your soul, to you, is worth that thing."

"I think my soul is worth making sure you can never perform shadow magic again. The world might not be over, but you came very close to messing up. You put everyone we know in danger, not just from yourself and your shadow magic, but from the people who were trying to stop you."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean the only thing that saved Yuugi, Honda, Jounouchi and Shizuka from Seto Kaiba bearing down on them at full fury was a stipulation in Yuugi's duelist contract that specifies his friends and family cannot be kidnapped by KaibaCorp."

"I admit, some of what happened with Kaiba was…unanticipated. But in the end, it worked out."

Ryou didn't blink as he stared Ryuuji down across the board. It was the sternest Ryuuji had ever seen his normally docile, reticent friend. Ryuuji was inclined to take Ryou seriously. There was too much conviction radiating from him not to.

"I promise I'll never use shadow magic again."

"That isn't enough."

"Please, don't."

"It's too late. You've agreed to the terms of three matches. I've decided this match, and now you have to play it out."

"What?"

"Hand me the dice."

"Ryou! Your soul is…not worth this. I promise I won't do shadow magic again. You don't have to force me."

"I don't trust you. It's not personal. I just don't trust shadow magic. Shadow magic always draws you back."

"But if you lose…I won't even remember what happened to you. I'll wake up in my bedroom and you'll be…there…. And I won't know why. Yuugi will know a little why. That man Isono and his boss Kaiba might suspect what happened. But I'll just be…freaking out. And I told Yuugi you'd be okay. I promised Yuugi you'd be safe. And I won't even remember that, either. I won't even remember that I promised something like this wouldn't happen to you."

"I'm sorry."

"Yuugi won't even know you bet your soul. Yuugi will blame himself for getting involved. He won't understand. You'll risk losing this game and guarantee hurting everyone you know on the slim possibility that my shadow magic might or might not be a problem in the future."

"Hand me the dice."

"Yuugi might even assume I did something to you. That I'm evil. When I see the board game and you, I might even think I did something to you. _I might even think I'm evil._ "

"You'll play the game, Ryuuji. Whether you want to or not. Hand me the dice."

Ryuuji reached out with a will that wasn't his own. He deposited the dice in Ryou's outstretched hand. He asked Ryou to reconsider one final time. He wasn't sure Ryou was even listening to a word he said.


	46. Chapter 46

"Can you confirm for me what the item in the photo is?"

Isono indicated the photograph he'd just placed on the table and slid over to Ryuuji Otogi. Ryuuji look down at it, uninterested.

"It's the Devil's Board Game. My father gave it to me. It's the only thing that survived the fire at our first shop."

"What does it do?"

Ryuuji continued tying his hair up with the band Isono had just brought him. He spoke through a clenched jaw, holding the band between his teeth for easy access as he swept strands of varied lengths away from his face.

"My father used it to play a shadow game with Sugoroku Mutou. He bet fifty years of his life and lost." Ryuuji took the band and wrapped it around the collected bunch of hair. Now, he could speak clearly again. "You place bets with it."

"How does it work?"

"It's supposed to help you collect and store shadows. You use those shadows to perform spells. To play games that become spells."

"And how does it do that?"

Ryuuji gave up on wrapping the band more than twice. He'd already broken three. He brought his hands down and leaned back in his chair, watching Isono with very little expression.

"I don't know how."

"Do you know how to use it to summon shadows? Have you ever tried?"

"No. I don't know any of that. I know my father taught me, but…I don't remember it anymore. It's been a long time."

Isono sighed and adjusted the sunglasses that had begun to slip down his nose.

"I know I've asked you this already, but I want to press on you again how important it is that you tell us the truth: Have you ever preformed shadow magic, Mr. Otogi?"

"No, I haven't," said Ryuuji. He crossed his arms. "Not alone, at any rate. I don't think it's possible without the Sennen Items around. Even when my father taught me about shadow magic, I can't remember doing any of it myself."

"But the shadow magic worked when your father used it?"

"Yes."

"How did he use it?"

"All I remember is that he'd set up the game and have me bet years of my life to the shadows. If I won, he'd challenge me for the years I'd won. If I lost, he'd play against the shadows for some of the years I'd lost. It was the only way he could manage to keep living long enough to get revenge on Sugoroku Mutou."

"And you don't remember how he did it?"

"He never explained how it was done. I just remember the rules of the game, not how to summon the shadows."

"How are you even sure the shadow magic was real, then? You were a child. Maybe he was just trying to scare you."

"No, I know the shadow magic was real. I saw pictures and watched tapes of my father before he became deformed. I saw what happened in the Battle City Tournament, too. I even watched the Ceremonial Duel between Yuugi and Atem. But the thing is, like most of us who've seen all those things, I don't know how to use any of that magic stuff myself. I know a lot _about_ shadow magic, you see, because my father made me learn about it, but I've never had to use it."

Isono took back the photo and thanked Ryuuji for his time. Ryuuji would have to wait a little longer, but he should be able to go home by the end of the day. Isono would have some tea brought if Ryuuji was thirsty. Ryuuji thanked him and said he'd like some juice. Something with peach. He expressed a desire that things would proceed quickly, because he was getting tired of waiting.

Isono left the interrogation room. He accepted a folder from one of his subordinates as he shut the door behind him. He directed the subordinate to check if there was any peach tea or something like that in the downstairs vending machine and to bring it to Ryuuji Otogi while he waited to be let go. Isono then continued to his next appointment. He leafed through the new file as he went, noting any changes or annotations made by Mr. Durazno. He stopped at the door and continued to read. Finally, with a deep breath, he turned the knob and stepped inside.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Bakura," said Isono. Ryou stood politely to shake Isono's hand across the table before they both sat down. "As you've undoubtedly been told by Mr. Durazno, I'm Mr. Isono. Among other things, I work as head of security at KaibaCorp."

"Yes. I was told you had some questions for me about shadow magic. I just want to clarify before we start that I'm really not much of an expert. I know a lot about shadow magic as like, a topic, but it's just a general interest of mine. I wouldn't be able to provide much practical advice."

"We're not going to need much practical advice. My questions aren't about spells and things of that nature. First, I simply want to know if you've ever seen shadow magic done without the use of a Sennen Item."

"No. I've seen a lot of things that might be hard to believe, but nothing that wasn't done without a Sennen Item years ago."

"That's what I thought. The problem is, security at KaibaCorp was recently compromised by a magical attack directed against our CEO. Can you make any sense of how someone might've been able to threaten Seto Kaiba in such a manner? Without a Sennen Item?"

Ryou thought a moment, raking his brain, but came up short. He smiled apologetically and shook his head. "I have no idea," he said. "Even if there's no Sennen Item, there has to be something. I guess it's possible, theoretically, that there might be artifacts beyond the Sennen Items that have magical properties."

Isono opened his first folder, the same one he'd had out while questioning Ryuuji Otogi. He removed the same photograph. "Do you have any idea what this is?"

Ryou accepted the photo with both hands. He observed it quietly, shaking his head again.

"I've never seen this before."

"It belongs to Ryuuji Otogi. It's called the Devil's Board Game. Are you familiar with the story of Ryuuji Otogi's father, the man who went by the name Mr. Clown?"

"Yes, I am."

"This board is how he made the bet with Sugoroku Mutou. Were you aware that Mr. Clown was a shadow magician?"

"No, but I guess it makes sense. Wouldn't that make Yuugi's grandpa a shadow magician, too? At any rate, they both seemed to know a lot about the practical use of shadow magic."

"Are you aware if Mr. Clown's son, your friend Ryuuji Otogi, is capable of performing shadow magic as well?"

"I don't know. If he can, he's never done it around anyone we know."

"Where were you yesterday between 5 and 8pm?"

"I was at Ryuuji Otogi's apartment."

"Why did you visit him?"

"I wanted to talk about something."

"About what?"

"I don't remember. I guess it wasn't important. Some new DDD packs came out recently. I guess it was about that."

"At 3:47 you left a message for Ryuuji Otogi at the Black Clown offices in KaibaCorp Tower," said Isono. He pulled his second folder forward, the one he held that pertained to everything he and his team knew about Ryou Bakura. He removed a printed page and handed it over. "After three attempts, you were able to leave the message 'talk about a problem related to Yuugi' as your reason for visiting. You marked the message at a full ten when rating its urgency. I'm wondering if you can tell me what this problem with Yuugi was?"

Ryou read over the page. His brow furrowed in confusion. He looked up to Isono, his eyes traveling over the reflective and impenetrable shades of the man's sunglasses, uncertain where to settle his gaze. Slower this time, Ryou once more shook his head.

"I remember going there. I remember leaving this message. I remember everything except why or what the problem was." Ryou's voice faltered. A small vein of panic wound through it and nearly choked it off. "Is…is Yuugi okay? Did something happen to him? Is that why I'm here?"

"Yuugi Mutou is fine."

Ryou nodded. He grew suddenly grave. "Did something happen to me, then?"

Isono shifted in his seat and opened the folder on Ryou once more. He fingered through a few of the documents, trying to decide which line of investigation to pursue. After a moment, he snapped the folder shut and placed it down. He removed his sunglasses and met Ryou's gaze openly with his own.

"Do you know who I am, Ryou Bakura?"

"You're Mr. Isono. You work as head of security at KaibaCorp, among other things, you said."

"Have you ever seen me before?"

"You sometimes arbitrate duels for KaibaCorp. I've seen you on television. They say you have some of the most thorough knowledge of Magic & Wizards standards of play in the entire world."

"Have we ever spoken until now?"

"Not directly. Not that I remember. You were at the Battle City Tournament, but my memory of that tournament's hazy. Sorry."

Isono removed one more photo from the file and handed it to Ryou while Ryou offered him the others back. Isono thanked Ryou and placed them where they belonged. He put his sunglasses back on before asking the next, obvious questions.

"Do you know what that is?"

Ryou smiled slightly despite his growing confusion and concern. "It's a watch," he said. "A broken watch and candy. A mess on the ground."

"Do you know whose watch it is?"

"No. But those are some of my favorite candies all over the floor. What a shame someone wasted them."

"Quite," said Isono. He pulled out his copy of the timeline Ryou had followed yesterday evening, checking and crossing next to different events. "Let's talk more about your visit to Ryuuji Otogi's apartment."

"Did something happen when I visited Ryuuji?"

"That's what we're trying to find out."

"Is Ryuuji okay?"

"Ryuuji Otogi's fine. He's also having trouble remembering some details."

"I hope it's nothing too bad."

"Honestly, you're both more or less the same. So, he's as fine as you are. There are just some gaps."

"Is that what we're doing here? Locating the gaps?"

"Yes, Mr. Bakura."

Ryou nodded as he began to slowly understand the circumstances that had put him in this room. Several hours ago, he'd woken up in a bed he didn't know, attended to by people he'd never met. They'd asked him what the last thing he remembered was. He'd said he remembered that he was sitting on Ryuuji's couch, and Ryuuji was sitting cross-legged on the other end. Ryuuji had been listening to him, but Ryou couldn't remember what they'd been talking about.

Given his past experience with the spirit of the Sennen Ring taking over his body for days at a time, Ryou hadn't initially responded with much alarm at his unknown surroundings. The worry had come later, when he'd remembered that stuff like this didn't happen anymore, and hadn't happened for years. None of the strangers would answer his questions. They tried placating him with vague statements about him falling ill, about how they just needed to ask him a few questions and he could go home, about how they couldn't really tell him anything even if they'd wanted to because they didn't know either, and he'd have to talk to Mr. Isono when Mr. Isono arrived. They were waiting for Mr. Isono, all of them, and Ryou would have to wait, too. A few hours later, they'd taken him to the interrogation room with the long table and introduced him to someone called Mr. Durazno.

It calmed Ryou considerably to know he wasn't alone now, that although something had happened to both him and his friend Ryuuji, there was a reason for it. Mr. Isono knew that reason. Ryou asked if he could see the timeline they were working with, thinking it'd be faster to point out where his memory went in and out. To Ryou's surprise, Mr. Isono refused.

"It's in the best interests of KaibaCorp that some of what you've forgot stays forgotten," said Isono at Ryou's hurt and perplexed response. "You're not in any danger. It's just for the sake of security."

Ryou grew still. "I knew you and forgot, didn't I?" he asked. When Isono didn't answer, Ryou sighed and leaned forward to rest his elbows on the table. "You asked if we'd ever spoke, and something in your tone implied to me that we're already acquainted."

"That's perceptive of you," said Isono. Ryou couldn't tell if Isono was impressed or irritated. The sunglasses concealed the crucial key to figuring out his emotions. "I can't divulge the full nature of what you assisted me with, but yes, you spent some time helping me locate the originators of the threat on Seto Kaiba."

"Was Ryuuji helping, too?"

"…Sure."

"Was Yuugi in trouble?"

"A bit."

"Okay. I guess I understand, then."

"Excellent. I have a good amount of questions left, but after this you can go home. Try to tell me everything you can remember. Be as detailed as possible."

"Okay."

Isono adjusted himself in the seat, making himself comfortable. He pulled up his clipboard so Ryou couldn't see it before he opened the folder again. Before he could begin the next question, however, Ryou interrupted him.

"I'm sorry, by the way."

"For what?"

"For forgetting I knew you."

"That isn't your fault," said Isono with a shrug. "Indeed, I think it's better for you. It's better for you and Ryuuji Otogi that you both don't remember much. I understand that this is probably rather perplexing and frightening for you right now, but in the end I think it'll benefit you."

"Did we fail?"

"What?"

"Did we fail at stopping the shadow magic attack?"

Ryou could tell Isono had looked away because he'd inclined his head slightly to the left. He disliked the question so much he'd reacted without remembering Ryou couldn't see half his face. The reaction told Ryou that he and Isono had worked together a lot. It told him that once Isono had maybe even let down his guard around him.

"Why do you ask?" asked Isono, his voice betraying nothing that the slight movement of his head already had.

"Well, why else would I have forgotten everything? Clearly something went wrong."

"Ah yes, I see. All I can tell you is that we didn't fail. Not exactly. The nature of the threat changed through our intervention. The original, intended effect was mitigated. It was substituted by something less extreme."

"So, is Seto Kaiba okay?"

"Well enough."

"So, not great."

"He's not as bad as he could've been. Physically, he's fine. He's just…well, to be honest, he'd a bit downcast. But, he'll get over it."

"What happened to him?"

"I'm not permitted to disclose that information."

"I understand that. Was anyone hurt? Anyone at all?"

"You and Ryuuji Otogi seem to be the only ones suffering any…lasting…effects."

"What happened to us?"

Isono shrugged and focused his eyes down at the folder and the clipboard in his hands. He clicked his pen over and over unconsciously the entire time he spoke.

"Honestly, we don't know. My people found you both unconscious in Ryuuji Otogi's apartment with this Devil's Game Board, or whatever it is, cleaved in two beside you. We've been trying to work out what happened, but both of your memories seem to cut off at around the same point. Ryuuji Otogi expressed surprise that the Devil's Game Board was even in his apartment. He said it was supposed to be in storage. We checked his claim, and there's no record of anyone taking the board out or even visiting the locker where it was held since he left it there three years ago. We think it might've been stolen. We don't know by whom."

"You think the board has something to do with our memories being erased?"

"That's the theory."

"Can we get them back?"

"I imagine not, what with the board broken."

"Do you think this interview will help you at all?"

"Honestly, I doubt you'll tell me anything I don't already know."

Ryou decided he'd asked enough. He now had what he considered to be a sufficient handle on the situation. Again, this sort of thing wasn't totally alien to him. He'd forgot whole chunks of his life before, had woken up in places and positions he didn't remember getting into, and all of it had been somehow tied to shadow magic. If there was ever anyone who could be said to handle such situations well, it was Ryou Bakura. Sure, it was upsetting, but he knew from experience everything would be fine. It was a lie, that what you didn't know couldn't hurt you, but it was true that what you didn't know didn't merit ruining your life worrying about.

"Well, then," said Ryou at last, "I supposed you can just keep asking questions and see if it helps. I'll try my best."

"Excellent. It won't take much longer. After this, you can go home, Mr. Bakura. You can put this whole thing behind you."

"There isn't much to put behind."

"So, it'll be easy for you."

"Sure. I suppose it will."


	47. Chapter 47

Yuugi had taken Mokuba's suggestion to try Capsule Monster Chess, though he wasn't entirely convinced it'd be the same as Magic & Wizards. Seto was already bored with the game, having mastered it along with countless other games since adolescence. This particular game carried the connotation of being Mokuba's favorite and was intertwined with Seto's eternal perception of Mokuba as a child. Before they could even start playing, Seto had insisted the game was a child's enterprise not worthy of the greatest duelist in the world. He'd then only played one game, lost, and refused to sit for another.

Mokuba had been immediately offended when Yuugi told him Seto's assessment of the game, but he'd also understood. He'd suggested they implement their second plan: Find a New Game. Yuugi agreed with Mokuba that it was the only option left.

As plans went, the Find a New Game plan was straightforward. But, as was the unfortunate case with many straightforward plans, its apparent simplicity lay in the fact that it was nearly impossible and would require a titanic effort to realize. The goal was clear: Find a new game Seto Kaiba had never seen that he could play against Yuugi Mutou. The steps leading up to that goal, however, were nebulous at best.

It began to dawn on Yuugi over time that, in a significant way, he'd contributed to Ryuuji Otogi's original plan of bringing down Magic & Wizards. By taking away Seto's ability to duel him, he'd opened the door for other games to enter development in hopes that something could replace the game Seto had for so long defined himself and the relationship between him and his greatest rival.

"You seem busy," said Yuugi with an amused smile. Ryuuji Otogi rolled his eyes and kept shuffling through print-outs and stapled applications as thick as textbooks. He'd lost track of the proposal he'd been reading before he'd left for lunch, and it'd probably take him ten whole minutes to relocate it. The organizational system he'd used for years was woefully incapable of handling the recent surge in project proposals he was receiving. He was drowning in work. He'd considered skipping lunch entirely, but Yuugi had invited him out and held him to it.

"You don't understand," said Ryuuji. "Like I told you, Seto Kaiba has lost his fucking mind. He was in here the other day reading every fucking proposal on my desk and swearing at them. It was tense. He's desperate for new games. I don't know what the fuck is his problem."

"I guess he's decided to broaden his game horizons."

"Yeah, well, I'm pretty sure I accepted the position as head of game development here in order to avoid actually working. This is new. I hate this."

Yuugi laughed. He looked over the documents stacked in precarious towers over Ryuuji's desk and couldn't stop smiling. "I'm sure you're secretly happy to have something to work on other than Magic & Wizards," he said, knowing it was true, even if Ryuuji grumbled and pretended otherwise.

"Well, yeah, I am. But like, not this much more work."

"You finally have to earn your keep around this place, Ryuuji," said Yuugi. Ryuuji flicked the cap of a pen at him, but couldn't make it hit as hard as he could with dice. Yuugi swatted it away easily. "Anyway, how's my last game been doing?"

"The one with the Egyptian ghosts or the magicians?"

"The magicians."

"I mean, it's not as immediately accessible as it was when it was just repackaged scrabble, but sales are pretty great. Reviews are better. People like it. You already know that. I forwarded the emails. Also, I mean, the marketing department went all out. You've seen the ads. We've told the world they want this game, and so, they do. Fortunately, it's actually good and not all just hype. It might merit an expansion in the future at this rate."

"I'm just happy it got a second chance."

"It deserved one. It's a very promising game. You have potential, but then, you're the King of Games, so, creating games probably comes to you like breathing. I don't even have time anymore for making games. Not with this workload."

"Maybe I can help you. I can ask Kaiba to hire me."

"Since when can you go around telling Kaiba what to do?"

"I don't see why he'd say no."

"Probably because you have zero experience? And you would have to learn how I manage everything? I'm not an easy person to work with. I like things a very specific way, and I'm not going to let you change them. You have no idea how I operate."

"I might have some idea," said Yuugi with a shrug. "And anyway, I'm a quick study. I'm sure I'll figure it out."

"Good luck," said Ryuuji as he peered between two towers of paperwork. He let out a cry of elation as he finally found the proposal he'd been reading before they'd left to get lunch. "Speaking of luck, mine just improved. I was beginning to think I somehow brought this with me and left it at the restaurant. What a relief."

At that moment, a tower of papers Ryuuji had brushed with the furthest ends of his exaggerated hairstyle, shifted with a slight redistribution of its weight. Before either Yuugi or Ryuuji could reach out to stabilize it, it toppled over and spread its contents in an avalanche over the desk. Yuugi wisely snatched up Ryuuji's cold, neglected coffee so that its dregs weren't spilled all over Ryuuji's laptop.

"You need an assistant, Ryuuji," said Yuugi, waving the coffee at him. Ryuuji took it back with a sigh.

"When can you start?"

"I'll talk to Kaiba."


	48. Chapter 48

Seto Kaiba sat sullen and silent across the restaurant table from his little brother, Mokuba. He didn't like that Mokuba knew. Yuugi had told him everything because Yuugi had needed someone on his side. If Seto's had got his own way, Ryou Bakura and Ryuuji Otogi would've currently been held somewhere, locked up for the entirety of the foreseeable future. He didn't care about Isono's report that the two imbeciles had no memory of what had happened to them in Ryuuji Otogi's apartment. Seto still suspected them both and needed to hold them up as a target to lash out against in his frustration and anger.

"I hear Yuugi's working on a new game," said Mokuba after another long pause in which Seto mostly ignored everything Mokuba said in favor of staring sourly in every other direction but Mokuba's face. "Something with holograms. It's been very hush-hush, and even I can't get any information on it. Has he told you anything? I like to know what exactly we're paying him for. I trust him and everything, but holographic technology isn't cheap, and so, I'm hoping he's serious and not just fiddling around with it."

Normally, Mokuba didn't bring up Yuugi at all when he met with Seto. It wasn't because the topic was off-limits. Actually, it was the opposite. Yuugi and games were all Seto ever talked about. It was all he cared about. Mokuba was getting worried and kept reminding himself that he knew Seto fixated on things. Mokuba was the closest person in the world to Seto, so, Mokuba had to understand him, because if Mokuba didn't, no-one could.

As expected, asking about Yuugi's newest game got Seto talking. He didn't know the details of the game, either, he said, as he'd promised Yuugi he wouldn't pry into it. Mokuba was surprised Seto had kept that promise, and Seto complained that Mokuba had too low an opinion of him. Just because Seto spied on their employees and every single member of the executive board didn't mean he couldn't keep his word. None of the people he spied on had ever asked him not to spy on them anyway, so, it wasn't like he was breaking some kind of promise. Mokuba reminded Seto that he was violating a bond of trust between him and his subordinates. Seto snapped that Mokuba ought to know perfectly well why Seto kept such detailed tabs on people, seeing how whenever he didn't, Mokuba got himself kidnapped.

"Eventually you're going to know more about the minutiae of the lives of the people who work for us than you'll know about the operations of the company we actually run," said Mokuba.

Seto returned to being sullen and unreachable. Mokuba sighed and took out a tablet to check his email. It was amazing how times had changed. Seto was now the one moving his food around his plate disinterestedly while Mokuba switched over to work. Seto couldn't say he particularly missed being the busiest person on the entire planet, but he did regret the loss of power that had come with handing a portion of the reins of KaibaCorp to Mokuba only a few years ago.

If Seto had still held the power he'd held before, Ryou Bakura and Ryuuji Otogi would've paid for what they'd done already. Now, however, such decisions were apparently made by committee, and no-one else thought the measures Seto wished to take were necessary. Even Isono didn't support Seto, as Isono was convinced that Ryou was innocent. Seto had called Isono out on it after reading Isono's and his team's final report. Their conclusion was that it couldn't be proven beyond a doubt that Ryuuji was the shadow magician, and therefore retribution couldn't be taken against him. A hunch was not enough to act on. There could've been a third person for all anyone knew. Isono speculated that the shadow magician might've realized Ryou had the Blue Eyes White Dragon and come after him when he was at Ryuuji's. There was no way to know so long as Yuugi remained mum on the true identity of the shadow magician. However, if Seto were to allow them to interrogate Yuugi Mutou...

After reading the report, Seto had thrown it at Isono and snarled that what Isono was saying was that all of this was basically Isono's fault wasn't it? Isono was the idiot who'd forgot Ryou was carrying the Blue Eyes White Dragon in the first place.

For some reason, Mokuba wouldn't let Seto fire Isono. Seto realized at that moment that Mokuba had been using Isono to keep tabs on his older brother. Like everyone else in the company, Isono had chosen to trust Mokuba over Seto. So had Yuugi, by confiding in Mokuba what had happened against Seto's will. No-one supported Seto. He was alone. Mokuba had even hinted that Yuugi might've told him who the shadow magician was, and Mokuba had still decided to take no action against the person. When Seto had called him a fool and accused him of not caring about the absolute tragedy that'd befallen his older brother, Mokuba had shrugged and told Seto there were more games in the world than Magic & Wizards. Maybe this was a good opportunity for Seto to explore them.

Seto continued on by himself back to Kaiba Manor after his tense dinner with Mokuba. Mokuba didn't live in the house anymore, but had his own place in the city. It was natural to want space as he grew older, and a whole manor between them simply hadn't been space enough in Mokuba's rebellious teen years. He'd never moved back in permanently. Seto was for all intents alone in the house.

Except…now Seto suspected he wasn't as alone as he'd have liked. He was growning paranoid, glancing constantly over to household staff he normally didn't notice and expecting to catch them staring back. There were so many people in the house, he realized. There were so many eyes.

Seto didn't stay long after arriving home. He changed out of his dinner outfit and then went directly to the garage. A driver emerged from the security hut to assist him, but Seto sent them away. He'd drive alone tonight for a bit of recreation. What was the point of owning some of the nicest cars on the continent if he didn't ever use them?

Seto left the house. He drove out into the night to clear his mind. Flying a plane also relaxed him, but preparing for a flight took a lot of time, and he wasn't in a mood to wait. Cars had a way of flying, too. He left the speed limit far behind him as he wound up the scenic highway along the coast that nightfall didn't permit him to appreciate the beauty of. It wasn't like he'd hoped to get any sightseeing done so late. What he wanted was to think somewhere alone, to exist in a space where he was in absolute control. A place where the only doubts were his own and not the fears of others pressed upon him and deciding his course. He wanted freedom, and he didn't know where he could find it anymore.

Seto thought back to the quiet, dead room deep beneath the ground, in the bowels of the bowels of Kaiba Manor. He thought about the command center spread out there, waiting for him to flip the switch that would initiate its long dead processes. That room was the last thing left. It was the one thing he hadn't fully dismantled of the old regime, because he'd like the idea of it too much. He liked the rush of power and awe that pulsed through him just by knowing it existed. He liked to wander down there and sit in the leather chair that hadn't seen sunlight in two decades, to splay his fingers between knobs and buttons and flashing lights, and to stare down at the absolute destructive power on the planet.

It was a weapon, the ultimate weapon. At a moment's notice, Seto could choose any city, town, or fucking goddamn mountain he didn't like, and erase it from the globe.

Gozaburo had set the target as Domino City. Seto remembered that, even though he'd unset the target the same moment he'd seen it. He hadn't told anyone. He only reflected on it quietly to himself, in empty moments when life and existence felt futile: Why? Why had Gozaburo set his own city as the target? If the attack had ever launched, Gozaburo wouldn't have survived it, no matter how deep into the earth he burrowed. Pure destruction didn't leave survivors.

Seto thought about going down to the command center again. He thought about initialing the processes, setting the target, waiting to see if he'd have the urge to fire.

So far he hadn't gone down. Not for months. Something held him back. In a way, he knew he was afraid. A part of him hissed it wasn't worth it. It told him not to be a sore loser. It wasn't the world's fault he hated it.

Seto wasn't so sure.

Every day he debated with himself.

Every day he thought about going down there.

Every day he grew closer.

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 _ **Endnote:** The fic is over. Cue a closing shot of Seto speeding up the coastal highway while "Bruci la città" by Irene Grandi begins to play. The image fades to black and the credits begin to scroll by. Meanwhile, I refuse to answer a single damn question or explain myself besides confessing that yeah, so like, I totally chose the ending that sounded cool over any ending that might've made actual fucking sense, but whatever, amigos…here we are._

 _I then drop my mic and walk away in slow motion as everything in the background explodes behind me._

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 **Note on endnote:** lol jk I will totally answer your questions, people, because we fanfic writers like nothing more than talking about our own fanfics for ages, ok. There isn't really a review reply option on this site besides private messages, so you can hit me up on this writing account's tumblr of the same name with an ask, or you can find me on on AO3 with the same name again. It's all just "patxaran" everywhere I go.

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These notes are adding up, but I just want to thank those who have read this fic. The writer using the pseudo **kitashvi** rush-beta'd this, so the typos aren't so bad as they were (and I laugh every time I find one she missed and tell her about it, so no worries, _she knows they are there_ ). She also enabled me while writing this, so the fact that this fic even happened is thanks to her and Skype chats.

I also want to thank **presea221** and **angiembabe** for reviewing! I really enjoy seeing my readers reactions to what I've written, and update-by-update/chapter-by-chapter reviews are great for me to see how each development in the story is being taken. They are especially appreciated with a fic this long, where perhaps one review at the end when you finish might not fully encompass the entire experience of reading it. Thank you so much for your comments, and I'm sorry you both had to wait two whole chapters before finding out that the silly reason no-one recognized Isono was because he didn't have his glasses on. This story is, in many parts of it, extremely silly. Thank you so much for putting up with it these few weeks, and I hope that, even if the ending is not perfect and happy, it is at least, perhaps, intriguing? Hahaha...


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